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Cognitive load is what matters

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Re: Cognitive load is what matters

#241

Post by computerdork »

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?

I like the digital note-taking tools, Evernote and Onenote - actually, used to use Evernote, but it started slowing down after my notebooks became too large, so switched to Onenote.

And eventhough Onenote is MS product and Evernote was the original that OneNote copied off of, OneNote is a better engineered piece of software (I have tons of notes and a few of them very large documents), and Onenote rarely has problems.

Re: Cognitive load is what matters

#242

Post by [deleted] »

latexr wrote: post #214
darkstarsys wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly they were missing Amanda, the engineer who's had to review others' terrible code (and her own) for 20 years, and has learned the hard way to keep it simple. She knows she's writing code mostly for people to read, not computers. Give me a small team of Amandas any day.

> Amanda Am I missing a reference? If not, may I suggest “Ada”? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_Lovelace Or even better, “Grace”. Seems to fit your description better. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYqF6-h9Cvg

[deleted]

Re: Cognitive load is what matters

#243

Post by insanebrain »

I love love love monorepo + fat encapsulated modules + a couple of deployables. Why does the software industry create fake complexity/creativity in the craft? Fashion/hype architectures for dopamine and fulfilment. You're just wasting energy finding new ways to create machine code for hardware. Why not get creative in the hardware and actually make something new? Another thing that really grinds my gears, is how many human hours are poured into js frameworks instead of improving browsers. What an utter waste of time. Maybe mediocre engineers like me who could never design a CPU or extend a browser need to feel seen by embracing a new domain whatever concept to make us feel warm and fuzzy but not really innovate the real hard things that move the needle.

Re: Cognitive load is what matters

#245

Post by computerdork »

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%.

Yeah, my OneNote notebook is huge now, littered with checklists, processes, and just notes on different subjects. It's like a secondary memory for me at this point, like longterm storage for rarely used but important info.

Re: Cognitive load is what matters

#246

Post by Xmd5a »

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%.

The right way to do it is to have one person (preferably you) go over the checklist, while someone else (typically a son) do the actual thing.

Re: Cognitive load is what matters

#247

Post by layer8 »

socalgal2 wrote: post #196
darkstarsys wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly they were missing Amanda, the engineer who's had to review others' terrible code (and her own) for 20 years, and has learned the hard way to keep it simple. She knows she's writing code mostly for people to read, not computers. Give me a small team of Amandas any day.

Mort: Someone who lacks sense of life, looks dumbfounded, and has only a limited ability to learn and understand. (urban slang) Elvis: A famous rock star Enstein: A famous physicist Amanda: ??? Mort, Elvis, Enstein are referencing things I've heard of before. What is Amanda referencing? is there some famous person named Amanda? Is it slang I'm unaware of?

Amanda is clearly the most beloved of those four. ;)

Re: Cognitive load is what matters

#248

Post by lukeschlather »

dsego wrote: post #153
mupuff1234 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or maybe it will actually increase the quality of software engineering because it will free up the cognitive load from thinking of the low level design to higher level architecture.

That's my fear, it will become a sort of a compiler. Prompts will be the code and code will be assembly, and nobody will even try to understand the details of the generated code unless there is something to debug. This will cause the codebases to be less refined with less abstraction and more duplication and bloat, but we will accept it as progress.

For me, I think it makes it more likely I will pick simple abstractions that have good software verification. Right now the idea of a webservice that has been proven correct to a spec is ridiculous, no one has time to write that, but it seems more likely that sort of thing will become ordinary. Yes, I won't be able to hold the webservice in my head, but reviewing it and making correct and complete statements about how it functions will be easier.

Re: Cognitive load is what matters

#249

Post by mimischi »

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?

I don’t think there’s a correct answer here. Whatever floats your boat. Do you want to scribble things by hand into a physical notebook? Great! Want to use Notepad on Windows for .txt? Or create a .docx using Word?

Don’t follow trends and seek the “next best way to hack your productivity”. Most of those things are snake oil and a waste of time. Just use whatever you have available and build a process yourself. That’s what most people have done that are successful in applying this. They just use the tool they are comfortable with, and don’t over engineer for the sake of it

Re: Cognitive load is what matters

#250

Post by layer8 »

makeitdouble wrote: post #123
gherkinnn wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mort is happy with an if soup. Amanda sees what the if soup ought to do and replaces it with a simple state machine and fixes two bugs along the way.

Wouldn't refactoring the if soup into an algorithmically elegant solution what the Einstein does ?

Einstein would write a new state-machine library with SIMD optimization for the purpose, and refactor any logic into it that could possibly be contorted into a state machine.
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