“clean code” is a phase most programmers go through. Like adolescence, with it’s desire to find The One True Way. But after that most of us discover that the principles are pointless in and by itself and that it’s often preferable to ship “working software” instead. - Clean code is a phase

see also

• “Clean” Code, Horrible Performance / blog - polymorphisme and avoiding internal knowledge whipeout twelve years of hardware improvement.
• Horrible Code, Clean Performance / HN
• Bad scientific code beats code following “best practices”