I work in ASIC design, and while it seems like gobbledygook, it's not too hard to grok with some experience. Ken's blogs help a lot in that regard. For context, compared to modern chips these are extremely simple, bit at the time the tools for chip design were limited so it was a bit of art and science in one. Now there is a lot of automation to help 'draw' the layout using standard cells for digital, but analog design is still an art (and incredibly complex one). So at least for digital weve first order abstracted designers from the individual gates and wires, and design is more akin to programming, though in languages designed for hardware. I feel fortunate enough to have seen both sides, so have done both the full custom design as well as the highly EDA driven design.