Meh, I'm a huge fan of "readable code" that is easy to follow and just makes sense with no need for explanations. And then there is code that is non trivial.
Too often I've found that vast amounts of effort were put into keeping something "readable" to the point that all of the extra readable hints either just got too large and unwieldy, or it prevented the developer from picking an easy and straight forward solution. (And to be fair, often that developer was me.)
I think there is a very real divide between what the logical flow for a computer to be presented something and the narrative flow for explaining that to another developer are. And no amount of clever variable/function names will really help here.
In fact, often times it can be worse. The proverbial isle of a grocery store. Too much to look at with no obvious "main" method. There is a reason it is a "rookie mistake" to have giant methods that do too much. When it comes down to it many people were only trying to get their program to do one thing. Cluttering their memory with the myriad steps necessary to get there is a large hurdle to get back into something.
Too often I've found that vast amounts of effort were put into keeping something "readable" to the point that all of the extra readable hints either just got too large and unwieldy, or it prevented the developer from picking an easy and straight forward solution. (And to be fair, often that developer was me.)
I think there is a very real divide between what the logical flow for a computer to be presented something and the narrative flow for explaining that to another developer are. And no amount of clever variable/function names will really help here.
In fact, often times it can be worse. The proverbial isle of a grocery store. Too much to look at with no obvious "main" method. There is a reason it is a "rookie mistake" to have giant methods that do too much. When it comes down to it many people were only trying to get their program to do one thing. Cluttering their memory with the myriad steps necessary to get there is a large hurdle to get back into something.