Paul GrahamVerified account

Code stylists are increasingly out of fashion - in fact early stage startups might be the only place they can flourish outside of hobby projects. Usually results - features - are what is rewarded, and sprints are short to ensure focus on delivery, not good code.

I'm a tool-builder, and I solve problems by creating tools that make the solution easy, and adjust them over time to increase composability. But most people use abstractions as mere containers for code. Tools compound; containers just stack. But incentives don't encourage former.

What is the limit of elegance?

When things can be made no simpler. With code you can approximate this roughly as: when the code can be made no shorter (except by gimmicks). And by short I mean the parse tree is small, not few characters or loc.

Yes, because simple things are easier to combine. Complicated things are difficult to combine.