I agree with mouser. And I think it especially applies to beginners to programming. As you're learning how to program (or a specific language) it's best to be clear so you can understand what it is you're doing when you come back from a week vacation than to try to be clever at the moment and have to spend 15 minutes trying to figure out how a relatively simple function works.
In my own programming projects, I've found that I tend to try to be lazy or clever and I'm almost always successful if I spend enough time thinking about it. But then when I come back to it later I have to spend just as much time figuring out how it really works, even if I've commented it in a way I thought was clear at the time.
Also, I've often found myself spending hours trying to think of a clever way to accomplish something and then in the end I use the idea I had at the very beginning but decided it was too much work and there had to be a more clever simpler way. And usually in these situations I find that what I thought was the "harder" way is actually completed and working much sooner than those hours I spent coming up with and testing new tricks to accomplish the task.
Finally, I'll just point out that your Beautiful Code blog entry seems to be making the assumption that simple code is equal to less code is equal to shorter code. I think that the original idea is perverted along the lines from Simple to Short, much like a game of
Telephonew. The original idea is "Simple code is beautiful code" and my interpretation of that is that simpler code is doing less things per line, resulting in shorter commands, but longer code.
Have you ever tried to understand source code you've never worked on? It can be very overwhelming. Code you can understand is indeed beautiful.
So if you simplify your code you will likely end up with more lines of code, but who doesn't like to brag about how many thousands of lines their code is? It makes a nice bullet point to show off how awesome your program is. Now, as with most things, there should be moderation. You shouldn't be a total zealot for only one simple thing per line of code always and forever. There is definitely a balance. The idea is to write your code simply and beautifully without going to extremes.
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