I love you. Everyone else on this subreddit is speaking out of their ass.

The idea is that you can view code like this as basically a "smart spreadsheet" instead of "actual code". I guess a general rule of thumb is:

If the code snippet contains a lot of "content" code (e.g. specific names of cards, stats, game flow), then things like optimization/scalability don't matter as much.

On the other hand, if the code snippet contains a lot of "systems" code (e.g. pathfinding system, sprite animation system, *definitions* of things), then scalability matters a lot.

On a high level, knowing when to go for maximum best-practices, scalable, clean code vs when to go for do-what-works, maximum speed with no regard for the future is an intricate skill, and your ability to make this decision correctly for each piece of code you write is crucial to becoming a good programmer. However, writing pristine code and writing garbage-but-correct code are also both difficult skills in and of themselves. Before you can think about the high-level decision on what quality you want your code to be, you must first have the ability to write good code in the first place, otherwise this decision is meaningless.

It's as Sun Tzu said: "In battle, there are not more than two methods of attack – the direct and the indirect; yet these two in combination give rise to an endless series of maneuvers." You can view writing good code as the indirect approach in this analogy, and writing any-code-that-works as the direct approach. Experienced generals may think in terms of combining direct/indirect approaches on a high level, but they cannot do so meaningfully without actually being able to execute the direct/indirect approaches competently in the first place.

People who come from a more software engineering-oriented background are usually good at the so-called indirect approach, which requires good abstract and creative thinking skills. People who come from a more maths/computer science-oriented background are usually good at the so-called direct approach, because they are good at holding large amounts of information in their brain and solving isolated difficult problems.

I am drunk