Why are direct proofs often considered better than indirect proofs? As the title indicates, I'm curious why direct proofs are often more preferable than indirect proofs. 

I can see the appeal of a direct proof, for it often provides more insight into why and how the relationship between the premises and conclusions works, but I would like to know what your thoughts are concerning this.

Thanks!

Edit: I understand that this question is quite subjective, but that is my intention. There are people who prefer direct proofs more than proof by contradiction, for example. My curiosity is concerning what makes a direct proof preferable to such individuals. In the past, I've had professors grimace whenever I did an indirect proof and showed me that a direct proof was possible, but I never thought to ask them why a direct proof should be done instead. What's the point?
I just did a quick lookup and it suggested that the two flavors of indirect proof was contraposition and contradiction.  What I'm about to say is criticizing contradiction, because contraposition seems fine to me.

Imagine you have a 1000 statement direct proof.  Then every step along that way is provable.  Maybe somebody reads your proof and realizes that an observation you made halfway through is exactly the idea they need to solve a problem they have.  Mathematical history has many examples of lemmas that are more famous than the theorems they originally supported.

By contrast, a 1000 statement proof by contradiction starts out with two hypotheses that are inconsistent.  Everything you're building is a logical house of cards that is intended to collapse at the end. Nothing you wrote can be counted on outside that framework without a separate analysis.

If it truly takes both hypotheses to get you to the result, then so be it.  But I was rightfully dinged by my professors when I wrote a proof by contradiction that could easily be modified into a direct proof by contraposition.
Even if direct proof is preferable, it's not always possible.  How could you prove, for example, that primes are infinitely many, except by showing that any finite number we assign to them entails the existence of yet another prime (Euclid Elements, IX, 20)--[edit] or contradicts something else known to be true, e.g. the divergence of the harmonic series (Euler)?

Proof of any kind of unlimited multitude, it seems, has got to be indirect, i.e. by contradiction.