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Simple Ways of Reducing the Cognitive Load in Code

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Re: Simple Ways of Reducing the Cognitive Load in Code

#91

Post by SonicSoul »

reikonomusha wrote: post #88

I've noticed recently that especially in online discussions, the term "cognitive load" is used as a catch-all excuse to rag on code that someone doesn't like. It appears to be a thought-terminating cliché. There's definitely room to talk about objective metrics for code simplicity, which are ultimately what many of these "cognitive load" arguments are about. But cognitive load seems to misrepresent the problem; I thi…

In cognitive psychology, cognitive load refers to the total amount of mental effort being used in the working memory

seems like a correct usage to me.

Anytime an ATM displays weird confirmation buttons like "Sure" instead of "Yes" or bloated confirmation text instead of "transaction completed" this increases cognitive load. I agree that it is debatable what kind of code exactly causes the least strain, but at least the term doesn't seem to be especially scientific.

Re: Simple Ways of Reducing the Cognitive Load in Code

#92

Post by jonahx »

delecti wrote: post #31
iamleppert wrote: post #5

"Use names to convey purpose. Don't take advantage of language features to look cool." I can't say enough about this. Please write code that is easy to read and understand, not the most compact code, and not the most "decorated" code, or "pretty" code or neat because it uses that giant list expression or ridiculous map statement thats an entire paragraph long. Similarly what bugs me is when I receive a pull request w…

I recently got a code review that in several places suggested I switch to the new Java 8 stream API [1]. I just flatly responded that it was far less readable, even if I could condense a half-dozen lines of code down to one. Where I can quickly scan over a foreach loop to get the jist of what it's doing, I have to closely examine each call in the new approach to have any idea what it's doing. [1] http://www.oracle.co…

hopefully they flatly responded that you're wrong.

more generally, if you can condense 6 lines to 1, that change will almost always improve readability. ofc, you can create golfed examples where this is not the case, but those are outliers. i'd say that if you are arguing in favor of code 6x as long as an equivalent implementation, the burden of proof is on you. and being used to a more verbose syntax because you've used it for years is not a valid defense.

Re: Simple Ways of Reducing the Cognitive Load in Code

#94

Post by reikonomusha »

SonicSoul wrote: post #91
reikonomusha wrote: post #88

I've noticed recently that especially in online discussions, the term "cognitive load" is used as a catch-all excuse to rag on code that someone doesn't like. It appears to be a thought-terminating cliché. There's definitely room to talk about objective metrics for code simplicity, which are ultimately what many of these "cognitive load" arguments are about. But cognitive load seems to misrepresent the problem; I thi…

In cognitive psychology, cognitive load refers to the total amount of mental effort being used in the working memory seems like a correct usage to me. Anytime an ATM displays weird confirmation buttons like "Sure" instead of "Yes" or bloated confirmation text instead of "transaction completed" this increases cognitive load. I agree that it is debatable what kind of code exactly causes the least strain, but at least t…

It's not incorrect necessarily, just unqualified. Cognitive load is hard to meaningfully substantiate; it is person and experience dependent.

Re: Simple Ways of Reducing the Cognitive Load in Code

#95

Post by 725686 »

ViktorasM wrote: post #62

Stopped reading at "Place models, views and controllers in their own folders". No worse way to organize your code than classify by behavior type. "Here are all the daos", "here is all business logic", "here are all the controllers". You add a feature as small as resource CRUD and scatter it's pieces across the whole code base. No.

Agree. A few years ago I read this http://olivergierke.de/2013/01/whoops-where-did-my-architect... post which made a lot of sense to me. Also this: http://www.slideshare.net/olivergierke/whoops-where-did-my-a...

Re: Simple Ways of Reducing the Cognitive Load in Code

#96

Post by jboy »

pimlottc wrote: post #75
iamleppert wrote: post #5

"Use names to convey purpose. Don't take advantage of language features to look cool." I can't say enough about this. Please write code that is easy to read and understand, not the most compact code, and not the most "decorated" code, or "pretty" code or neat because it uses that giant list expression or ridiculous map statement thats an entire paragraph long. Similarly what bugs me is when I receive a pull request w…

Using intermediate variables is one of the most underrated tools to make code more understandable. It's the definition of something completely unnecessary from a technical standpoint that is all about conveying meaning and clarity to other programmers. And it can be used to help group and "modularize" chunks of code within a routine without necessarily going to the extreme of pulling out a separate subroutine, which…

Agreed about using intermediate variables.

What's better than comments to describe what the code does? CODE that describes what the code does. (Let the code describe WHAT the code does, and if necessary, the comments describe WHY the code does it like that.)

In C++, if I use an intermediate variable to decompose a complicated expression into easier-to-understand sub-expressions, I like to make the intermediate variable `const` to emphasize that it's an intermediate component.

Re: Simple Ways of Reducing the Cognitive Load in Code

#97

Post by jimbokun »

delecti wrote: post #31
iamleppert wrote: post #5

"Use names to convey purpose. Don't take advantage of language features to look cool." I can't say enough about this. Please write code that is easy to read and understand, not the most compact code, and not the most "decorated" code, or "pretty" code or neat because it uses that giant list expression or ridiculous map statement thats an entire paragraph long. Similarly what bugs me is when I receive a pull request w…

I recently got a code review that in several places suggested I switch to the new Java 8 stream API [1]. I just flatly responded that it was far less readable, even if I could condense a half-dozen lines of code down to one. Where I can quickly scan over a foreach loop to get the jist of what it's doing, I have to closely examine each call in the new approach to have any idea what it's doing. [1] http://www.oracle.co…

Look, you're basically just saying you don't want to learn anything new.

"I just flatly responded that it was far less readable, even if I could condense a half-dozen lines of code down to one."

Express the exact same thing, in 1/6 the code, and somehow the shorter code takes longer to read and understand?

You don't even attempt to express why you find the shorter code harder to understand. Or show code written both ways, to argue why one is better than the other. Or anything at all to support your claim.

Based solely on what you're telling us here, I'm siding with your code reviewer on this one.

Re: Simple Ways of Reducing the Cognitive Load in Code

#98

Post by collyw »

Get a decent high level architecture, good, consistent database design and you don't write anywhere near as much application code. Start hacking about using one field for two purposes or having "special cases" and everything starts to get messy. These special one off cases will involve adding in more code at the application level increasing overall complexity. Repeat enough times and you will code a big ball of mud.

Instead people argue about number of characters per line or prefixing variable names with something and other such trivialities. (These things do help readability, but overall I think they are quite minor in comparison to the database design / overall architecture - assuming you are writing a database backed application).

Re: Simple Ways of Reducing the Cognitive Load in Code

#99

Post by [deleted] »

reikonomusha wrote: post #94
SonicSoul wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In cognitive psychology, cognitive load refers to the total amount of mental effort being used in the working memory seems like a correct usage to me. Anytime an ATM displays weird confirmation buttons like "Sure" instead of "Yes" or bloated confirmation text instead of "transaction completed" this increases cognitive load. I agree that it is debatable what kind of code exactly causes the least strain, but at least t…

It's not incorrect necessarily, just unqualified. Cognitive load is hard to meaningfully substantiate; it is person and experience dependent.

[deleted]

Re: Simple Ways of Reducing the Cognitive Load in Code

#100

Post by bdavisx »

kaoD wrote: post #39
tigershark wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely disagree, every method can be split in private methods. In that way you don't need awful and unhelpful comments in the middle because you can understand what it does simply from the method name.

Here's John Carmack's take on the issue: http://number-none.com/blow/john_carmack_on_inlined_code.htm... TL;DR: He's in favor of inlining functions.

Actually, if you are inlining, he says: "you should be made constantly aware of the full horror of what you are doing."

I wouldn't say he's in favor of it, he actually appears to be advocating for a pure FP approach. But if you have to, inlining is OK, with the quoted caveat.

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