In the extreme it's important in environments where "developer fungibility" is valued.
In the best case it's motivated by the reasonable desire to minimize the bus factor in the worst case it's a sign of a culture of assembly line coding.
That said, if you have trouble understanding code you wrote three months ago perhaps it's time to dial things down a bit - it can be a tricky balance.
"Code should be written so that the most junior developer can understand it."
What utter BS
In the extreme it's important in environments where "developer fungibility" is valued.
In the best case it's motivated by the reasonable desire to minimize the bus factor in the worst case it's a sign of a culture of assembly line coding.
That said, if you have trouble understanding code you wrote three months ago perhaps it's time to dial things down a bit - it can be a tricky balance.
The saying is utterly dependent on the quality of your most junior developer :-)