If a coworker told me the same thing, I'd ask, "Why?" If they gave me the explanation given in the article, I'd say, "Thank you, that's a nice little improvement. The code is simpler AND more general." Then, I'd go on working, a little bit better of a programmer for it. If I repeated this ritual a few hundred times, I might actually become a halfway-decent programmer. In this field, details matter.
There's a difference between seeing that something can be generalized, optimized, or improved and spending the time to do it.
Knowing that difference and applying judgement is a major differentiator between inexperienced programmers and experienced ones. That, I think, is what heyrhett was getting at.
I don't get it. In the case of the vector-add function, once you've happened to notice the more general solution, implementing it will take a couple of minutes. It's not comparable to an optimization, which would normally increase the risk of code errors -- it is a simplification, which would decrease the risk of code errors.
Two minutes to make a minor simplification and learn a generally good way of approaching things with the tool at hand (clojure)? Count me in.
