My view is pretty much entirely opposite of yours. The biggest problem I see with developers are developers who struggle to keep up because they don't know how to quickly navigate a code-base to understand the big picture, and end up bogged down reading way more than they need. Outside of languages designed to be read, lacking the ability to work by seeing structure is massively debilitating.
Meanwhile, I rarely if ever see people "reading code by looking at its shape", because recognizing code by shape doesn't tend to be something less experienced developers are any good at; if anything, caring about shape comes from caring about detail and wanting the detail to stand out. You need to be good at carefully reading code to be good at recognizing which aspect of the code matters and should stand out to be good at using code structure and shape as a tool to communicate.
> The biggest problem I see with developers are developers who struggle to keep up because they don't know how to quickly navigate a code-base to understand the big picture, and end up bogged down reading way more than they need.
That indicates a lack of a complimentary skill set involving cross-referencing tools, grep, and note-taking and diagramming. Similar to what you would do when trying to get an overview of a subject from books (citations, indexes, and diagrams and notes). Skimming by relying on code format reading is indeed a useless and counterproductive skill here, because you will miss the important details while wasting a lot of time. It is no surprise that you are seeing this in people if you and they think the cause and solution is a dichotomy between reading code and reading the code layout.
Meanwhile, I rarely if ever see people "reading code by looking at its shape", because recognizing code by shape doesn't tend to be something less experienced developers are any good at; if anything, caring about shape comes from caring about detail and wanting the detail to stand out. You need to be good at carefully reading code to be good at recognizing which aspect of the code matters and should stand out to be good at using code structure and shape as a tool to communicate.