It's not paradoxical at all. I think that the more syntax you have (thus shortening the code), the less you can reason about what you write while writing it, be

It's not paradoxical at all. I think that the more syntax you have (thus shortening the code), the less you can reason about what you write while writing it, because the mental overhead of writing itself goes up. Compare stenography to latin in that regard - stenography is almost never used to write down ideas, only to transcribe.