> On the other hand, writing code that the most junior in your team can understand leads to mediocre code.

Sorry but this is absolutely false in almost all regular corporate software jobs.

As i get greyer, I find myself spending much more time planning before I write any code now; what I would previously have run into headfirst and solved with a bunch of advanced language features and complicated logic usually now ends up being implemented in much less and simpler code.

This is the sign of a senior developer, in my book.

Writing code anyone finds hard to understand is a marker of inexperience to me.

If the problem can be solved efficiently with simple, write simple code by all means. Heck, if it can be solved with a spreadsheet, please use a spreadsheet. Even your boss can read it.

But, at some point, spreadsheets crumble and become unmaintainable. And so does "basic" code.

Should people keep on using spreadsheets ? Depends.