This is why I like python and C, almost impossible to layer in multiple layers of opaqueness with them. You can almost always deconstruct what the original person was trying to do, whether they were successful or not.
Hahahahah. The inheritors of my python code who are not my future self would beg to differ. I have so many opaque patterns that are vital and yet purely conventional it hurts. They will miss the intention and go off and do something else to solve a similar problem and now we have two patterns.
I work with Python in my day job. It is very possible to add tons of abstraction on top of a Python codebase. In fact, I would argue that it is very easy to do just that in Python, thanks to a combination of dynamic types and mutable state everywhere.
With Python, I find it's easy to understand what individual lines are doing, but really hard to understand what the codebase is attempting to do as a whole.