They're actually the opposite of a cargo cultist, even if the visible symptoms are identical. ... It isn't what you do...it's why you do it. ... "What" is not important. Only "why" is important.
I'll take the antithesis to that. If I'm given a body of code to incorporate into something else, or to extend because the requirements changed, or otherwise to maintain, and I see a "mess" that is fragile and hard to change, than the original author was either very smart or had a large monkey multiplier factor. Do I care which? NO! I only see the result, that the code is hard to maintain.
In anything other than your own throw-away program, the "visible symptoms" is the only part that matters. Everything else is just cold dead history.
—John
(still making you challange your assumptions)