Comment by TeMPOraL

> What's the main barrier to doing this all the time? Sounds like a good practice in general.

Misunderstanding of what "cognitive load" is. It's not measured in ability for a junior picked off a street at random to understand code they never saw before.

There are at least two components to cognitive load: knowledge and working memory. Human working memory is limited, meaning we can only keep track of so much code in our head at the same time, which sets an upper bound on code complexity we're able to handle. If the problem's inherent complexity is greater than that upper bound, you won't be able to effectively solve it at all.

The point of learning about the domain, learning design patterns, advanced programming techniques, the point of developing languages with powerful features, is to allow people to spend cognitive work up front, learning these techniques and tools, and then forever be able to handle more complexity within their limited working memory. The current zeitgeist of writing dumbest possible code anyone can understand, gets it exactly backwards: the dumber, more junior-friendly the code, the more working memory it takes up, for a fixed amount of problem complexity being addressed. In other words, the dumber code you insist on, the fewer and simpler problems you can solve with it before you hit the hard limits of human brains.

My own belief is that we're already witnessing it all the time - software increasingly sucks and is bug-ridden because industry is trying to save money by making the least experienced people available do most of the actual coding work. Basically, software quality and productivity, as well as the complexity of problems it can address, is being limited by working memory of junior developers.

(The industry doesn't actually stop people from learning - it just forces people who reached a minimum amount of competence and want to earn more money to switch to faux-management, which "senior" and above roles increasingly are.)