This is true and valuable, but it's worth mentioning that some aspect of cognitive load is subjective. The code I write is always lower cognitive load to me tha

This is true and valuable, but it's worth mentioning that some aspect of cognitive load is subjective. The code I write is always lower cognitive load to me than anyone else's code, even if my code has more cyclomatic complexity and code smells, because I've built up years of neural representations dedicated to understanding my favored way of doing things via practice and repetition. And I lack the neural representations needed to quickly understand other people's code if they approach things differently, even if their approach is just better. This is not to say we should keep practicing our bad habits, but that we should practice good habits (e.g. composition over inheritance) as quickly as possible so the bad habits don't become ingrained in how we mentally process code.