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Novice programmer: Uses simple if/else.

Adept programmer: Discovers polymorphism. It's great, uses it for everything.

Master programmer: Realizes that in many cases, it makes the code less clear and more verbose, reverts back to if/else until the flexibility is actually needed.

Same story repeats itself many times on different fronts: metaprogramming, recursion, exceptions, macros, etc.



One more step: Master programmer realizes that they're still a Novice programmer - repeats the cycle.




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