[dang]

I suspect the downvotes are because code readability is a complex, subtle topic that often gets reduced to flamewars by people who are sure they know ‘the’ right way to do things.

Code readability is relative to the reader, the programming language, and the conventions of a codebase. That's a lot of things to be relative to! Knowing that ought to put speed bumps on the way to dismissing code one isn't familiar with.

I remember having a reaction years ago on seeing some of P.J. Plauger's C++ standard library code. I think I burst out laughing and said I'd fire anyone who wrote code like that for me. Years of subsequent experience have brought multiple layers of understanding how wrong I was.