[tugu77]

> We were told that a really smart developer had contributed to it. Lots of cool architectures, fancy libraries and trendy technologies were used. In other words, the author had created a high cognitive load for us.

Maybe that dev was "really smart" but then not very senior. Eventually the dev will hopefully use their smarts to make things so simple+dumb that the cognitive load when maintaining all that code is minimized.

One of the first things I try to drill into our junior devs. If the code looks smart, it needs to be fixed until it's really simple and straight forward. "That's impossible" some people might say. And that's why only the really smart folks can achieve it.

[sesm]

> make things so simple+dumb that the cognitive load when maintaining all that code is minimized.

That's not very smart in BigCo, instead you want the complexity to leak into adjacent systems and make them depend on you.

[tugu77]

I know your comment is a little tongue-in-cheek, but that kind of thinking is in fact widespread and a reason why many of us are so miserable.