[jghn]

Yeah. Sure, "simple" and "complex" sorta have an objective definition. But colloquially "readable", "simple", "complicated", etc have a tendency to track with "things with which I'm familiar/comfortable (or not)".

Over the decades I've come to the conclusion that there's no such thing as a one size fits all sweet spot on this stuff. Different people are going to have different experiences with what they find straightforward or not. They will have different backgrounds, mental models, ways of perceiving the world. It all adds up. As a profession we need to understand this reality and find ways around it instead of getting into dogmatic arguments as if there's One Right Answer.

Common example I give - the GP complained about FP advocates wanting code to take up less screen space. I have come across many devs who struggle with concise code, and many others who struggle when code is not concise. Similarly, I have come across plenty of devs who start having trouble when code is spread out (sometimes that means within a file, across files, both, etc). I have also come across plenty of devs who have trouble when it's all pulled together.