I think about this all the time. The first several years of Laravel had just absolutely beautiful code to see (both from an engineering, OCD and aesthetic perspective)

Ive read quite a bit, including one of my favorite articles, "It's probably the phones": https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/honestly-its-probably-the-phon...

But then you kind of dove into the deepend there. Spy devices, 1984, etc. I think a more tempered approach is useful here