Perl Style: Elegance

`It is very hard to get things both right (coherent and correct) and usable (consistent enough, attractive enough).' --Dennis Ritchie
Strive always to create code that is functional, minimal, flexible, and understandable -- not necessarily in that order.
Think first. Then hack. Now throw it out. Repeat. Fred Brooks says, `Build one to throw away.' Always rewrite your code from scratch, preferably twice. just as did it with drafts of papers in grammar school. It improves understanding, gets the creative juices flowing, and produces a far finer end-product.
Sometimes making code shorter improves maintainability; other times it does not.