"Then again, almost every maintainability issue is, by itself, marginal. It's only collectively that subtleties, clevernesses, and esoterica begin to sabotage comprehensibility. And it's only collectively that obviousness, straightforwardness, and conformity to standards can help to enhance it. Every samll choice when coding contributes in one direction or the other."

Taken from Perl Best Practices, Damian Conway (p. 165).

In otherwords, when it comes to good old down-to-earth programming, let's not be too clever and just stick to the point. The well-defined point that is.