From my personal perspective, readability comes from the "beauty" of the code. Humans instinctively go on their first impressions, so code that looks appealing at first glance is code that is desired to be worked on. The absolute readability difference between the ternary operator and an if statement is inconsequential outside of which better fits the design context, I think.
I always like to think the text editor is my canvas and the characters are my brush. My job is to make something functional, of course, but also something that looks beautiful.
This is actually one of the things that's driving Mike's research. When the latest programming paradigm comes out, usually people argue it's better based on the code being shorter or prettier. Judging programming styles based on beauty is inherently subjective, so Mike is trying to find some quantitative basis for comparing programming systems.
I always like to think the text editor is my canvas and the characters are my brush. My job is to make something functional, of course, but also something that looks beautiful.