> That's an awful way to think about hard to read code
Most of the time I hear about "hard to read code" is "pattern I don't currently have a mental model for". We didn't move on from COBOL by letting that be a deterrant.
Fair, I've actually seen both types of situations. I only complain after having some domain knowledge of the project and the language/tools. After sufficient understanding, I will make sure that the code that gets merged into master is highly readable. Simple > complicated. Always. Don't be ashamed to write simple code.