Wow! I like this. "Cognitive fluency" is a concept that I've felt should exist for a long time (but, amusingly, have had no words to describe). It's a reason why I believe in the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_relativity</a>).<p>Cognitive fluency has a lot of relevance for programming languages research. From the article: "When people read something in a difficult-to-read font, they unwittingly transfer that sense of difficulty onto the topic they’re reading about." Wow -- similarly, the programming language you're writing in might have an even bigger effect on what programs you find easy to create or think about.