[pydry]

There is no one metric of code quality. There are a bunch of competing concerns, some of which will push others down if you push them up.

With cognitive load it doesn't even generalize. Who hasn't worked with somebody who joined a project and then immediately started changing the code to be more aligned to their taste in idioms to reduce the cognitive load. Their cognitive load that is. Not necessarily anybody else's.

[seadan83]

First day of a new job, a new commute all have exceedingly high cognitive loads. Come back from that, all you did was just HR stuff and a new commute and are exhausted! After a year, suddenly that commute, the byzantine policy stuff has a cognitive load of, "yeah, this is all super simple."

My point, the unfamiliar might have actually lower cognitive load. Cognitive load is a function of what you know and what you are used to.