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Cognitive load is what matters

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Re: Cognitive load is what matters

#231

Post by jama211 »

noen wrote: post #18

This article reminds me of my early days at Microsoft. I spent 8 years in the Developer Division (DevDiv). Microsoft had three personas for software engineers that were eventually retired for a much more complex persona framework called people in context (the irony in relation to this article isn’t lost on me). But those original personas still stick with me and have been incredibly valuable in my career to understan…

I think this is somewhat dangerous, it can lead you to categorise people unfairly and permanently. Also, in my experience this has a critical flaw - the managers love morts in my experience, not Elvises. They don’t care about the technical details, so “fastest and fits the business outcome the most” is ideal.

Also the actual solution is proper team leadership/management. If you have morts, make sure that code quality requirements are a PART of the requirements their code must pass, and they’ll instead deliver decent work slightly slower. Got an elvis? Give more boundaries. Got Einsteins? Redefine the subtasks so they can’t refactor everything and give deadlines both in terms of time but also pragmatism.

Either way, I don’t love this approach, as it removes the complexity from the human condition, complexity which is most important to keep in mind.

Re: Cognitive load is what matters

#232

Post by ajuc »

mettamage wrote: post #206
e40 wrote: post #195

This is why I make lists. Of everything. Checklists for technical processes (work and personal). Checklists for travel. Little "how to" docs on pretty much everything I do that I'm sure I won't remember past a week. It completely removes the stress of doing things repeatedly. I recently had to do something I hadn't done in 2 years. Yep, the checklist/doc on it was 95% correct, but it was no problem fixing the 5%.

In like Apple Notes or what do you store the checklists in?

Txt files are hard to beat

Re: Cognitive load is what matters

#233

Post by jama211 »

tempodox wrote: post #106
Waterluvian wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah… it’s like picking three points in an n-dimensional matrix. It is sufficient for creating an illusion of being scientific about it.

Indeed. And besides that, all three are really bad parodies. Mort is the only one where the product actually works, because for him that’s an explicit goal. With the other two, a working product is mere coincidence.

Precisely. Also people underestimate the power of mort code. The world runs on it, and besides, at the end of the day unless you are an executive or own significant stock in the company, making decisions about speed/outcome vs tech debt actually isn’t your job IMO. Give your opinions and advice but at the end of the day build what they ask you to in the manner they’re happy for you to build it - if they demand speed over quality that’s on them.

And you can improve everything with a system. A team of morts forced into a framework where testers/qa/code review find and make them fix the problems along the way before the product is shipped is an incredibly powerful thing to behold.

Re: Cognitive load is what matters

#234

Post by physidev »

I think the viewpoint articulated in this post fits quite well with the one expressed in the often-shared "Programming as Theory-building" article (I think it was shared here just a few days ago).

Scientists, mathematicians, and software engineers are all really doing similar things: they want to understand something, be it a physical system, an abstract mathematical object, or a computer program. Then, they use some sort of language to describe that understanding, be it casual speech, formal mathematical rigor, scientific jargon -- or even code.

In fact, thinking about it, the code specifying a program is just a human-readable description (or "theory", perhaps) of the behavior of that program, precise and rigorous enough that a computer can convert the understanding embodied in that code into that actual behavior. But, crucially, it's human readable: the reason we don't program in machine code is to maximize our and other people's understanding of what exactly the program (or system) does.

From this perspective, when we write code, articles, etc., we should be highly focused on whether our intended audience would even understand what we are writing (at least, in the way that we, the writer, seem to). Thinking about cognitive load seems to be good, because it recognizes this ultimate objective. On the other hand, principles like DRY -- at least when divorced from their original context -- don't seem to implicitly recognize this goal, which is why they can seem unsatisfactory (to me at least). Why shouldn't I repeat myself? Sometimes it is better to repeat myself!? When should I repeat myself??

If you want to see an example of a fabulous mathematician expressing the same ideas in his field (with much better understanding and clarity than I could ever hope to achieve), I highly recommend Bill Thurston's article "On proof and progress in mathematics" https://arxiv.org/abs/math/9404236>.

Re: Cognitive load is what matters

#235

Post by jama211 »

HumblyTossed wrote: post #127
noen wrote: post #18

This article reminds me of my early days at Microsoft. I spent 8 years in the Developer Division (DevDiv). Microsoft had three personas for software engineers that were eventually retired for a much more complex persona framework called people in context (the irony in relation to this article isn’t lost on me). But those original personas still stick with me and have been incredibly valuable in my career to understan…

I lean towards Mort for most things, Einstein for the key things and freaking NEVER Elvis.

Mort is the only one who does their job from the perspective of the business owner.

Re: Cognitive load is what matters

#236

Post by andix »

ttz wrote: post #32
Buttons840 wrote: post #4

I'm probably one of the "smart developers" with quirks. I try to build abstractions. I'm both bothered and intrigued by the industry returning to, what I call, "pile-of-if-statements architecture". It's really easy to think it's simple, and it's really easy to think you understand, and it's really easy to close your assigned Jira tickets; so I understand why people like it. People get assigned a task, they look aroun…

I was recently having a conversation with some coworkers about this. IMO a lot of (software) engineering wisdom and best practices fails in the face of business requirements and logic. In hard engineering you can push back a lot harder because it's more permanent and lives are more often on the line, but with software, it's harder to do so. I truly believe the constraints of fast moving business and inane, non sensic…

> a lot of (software) engineering wisdom and best practices fails in the face of business requirements

They fail on reality. A lot of those "best" practices assume, that someone understands the problem and knows what needs to be built. But that's never true. Building software is always an evolutionary process, it needs to change until it's right.

Try to build an side project, that doesn't accept any external requirements, just your ideas. You will see that even your own ideas and requirements shift over time, a year (or two) later your original assumptions won't be correct anymore.

Re: Cognitive load is what matters

#237

Post by jama211 »

_dain_ wrote: post #130
noen wrote: post #18

This article reminds me of my early days at Microsoft. I spent 8 years in the Developer Division (DevDiv). Microsoft had three personas for software engineers that were eventually retired for a much more complex persona framework called people in context (the irony in relation to this article isn’t lost on me). But those original personas still stick with me and have been incredibly valuable in my career to understan…

mort = paladin elvis = thief einstein = mage

Who’s the bard? I feel like I’m more of a bard

Re: Cognitive load is what matters

#238

Post by jama211 »

semiinfinitely wrote: post #112

The ability to create code that imposes low cognitive load on others not only is a rare and difficult skill to cultivate- it takes active effort and persistence to do even for someone who already has the ability and motivation. I think fundamentally the developer is computing a mental compression of the core ideas - distilling them to their essence - and then making sure that the code exposes only the minimum essenti…

It is! But it’s also a bonus rather than a requirement for a lot of firms. For proof, look at any major codebase.

Re: Cognitive load is what matters

#239

Post by danielpoer1098 »

mettamage wrote: post #206
e40 wrote: post #195

This is why I make lists. Of everything. Checklists for technical processes (work and personal). Checklists for travel. Little "how to" docs on pretty much everything I do that I'm sure I won't remember past a week. It completely removes the stress of doing things repeatedly. I recently had to do something I hadn't done in 2 years. Yep, the checklist/doc on it was 95% correct, but it was no problem fixing the 5%.

In like Apple Notes or what do you store the checklists in?

[dead]

Re: Cognitive load is what matters

#240

Post by tptacek »

mdaniel wrote: post #121
tptacek wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I briefly flagged the preceding comment for "psycho-bullshit" before concluding that it was just a really forceful way to say the developer personas were pseudoscientific (of course they are, nobody is claiming otherwise) but I think it's worth calling out that MBTI is also pseudoscientific; it has no real validity, or even test-test reliability.

I would guess that lack of repeatability happens a lot with any self-reporting scheme, but I am sorry that I accidentally picked such a polarizing "people generalization" scheme to use as contrast. Maybe I should have used "introvert versus extrovert" or something Anyway, their sibling comment told me what I wanted to know, so in that way I'm wasting more of my time contributing to this

I thought the Microsoft developer persona thing was cute. I didn't think anybody was claiming it was science!
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