> And then you bump into the code lines crafted by the experts, and they are line for line so 'smart' they take a real long time to figure out how the heck it all fits together.

Thing is, the alternative to "smart" code that packs a lot into a single line is code where that line turns into multiple pages of code, which is in fact worse for understanding. At least with PL features, you only have to put in the work once and you can grok how they're meant to be used anywhere.