Sometimes it is better to just do something. This just does not wash. It makes our code helpful, wise, obedient, trustworthy, loyal, and all the rest. Reading C hurts my eyes. I distrust any language which promotes convoluted code contests.
Some magazines sponsor such events.
Admittedly, C is fun to work with. Most of my complaints are against the use and abuse of the language, rather than against C itself. Specifically, I feel far too many programmers take advantage of the forgiving nature of the compiler to generate crummy code. In addition, the C compilers themselves generally do not provide the resources we need to write decent embedded code. Pretty Code Long ago I owned a succession of Volkswagen beetles.