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Cognitive load is what matters

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1455 points nromiun | 1 comments | 30 Aug 25 12:58 UTC | HN request time: 0.245s | source
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lxe ◴[30 Aug 25 14:51 UTC] No.45075154[source]▶
Introducing intermediate variables is what I call "indirection". You're adding another step to someone reading the code.

Let's take a recipe:

   Ingredients:
   large bowl
   2 eggs
   200 grams sugar
   500 grams flour
   1/2 tsp soda

   Steps:

   Crack the eggs into a bowl. Add sugar and whisk. Sift the flower. Add the soda.
When following the instruction, you have to always refer back to the ingredients list and search for the quantity, which massively burdens you with "cognitive load". However, if you inline things:

   Crack 2 eggs into a large bowl. Add 200g sugar and whisk. Sift 500g of flower. Add 1/2 tsp soda.
Much easier to follow!
replies(4): >>45075166 #>>45075910 #>>45075921 #>>45076490 #
1. pessimizer ◴[30 Aug 25 17:36 UTC] No.45076490[source]▶
Redundancy like that makes people like me feel that we missed something, and ruins forward progress. If you started "Crack 1 egg into the bowl." I'd move through it at light speed. When you say "Crack 2 eggs..." I think, "did I miss some ingredients, aren't there only two eggs?" and I rescan the entire ingredient list.

Then, still unsure, I go back and read the end of the sentence. "...into a large bowl."

Another large bowl? Wasn't there only one bowl? Was there another small bowl? Were the other eggs supposed to be in the small bowl? Is there another recipe listed separately where I'm supposed to crack the other egg (that might exist) into a small bowl? A single egg would only need a small bowl. Yes, there's probably another part of the recipe that is a sauce or filling or something that needs you to crack one egg into a small bowl. Let me reread everything on this webpage until I find something referred to that might be a necessary part of finishing this recipe, find the instructions to make that, then come back to this. Also, I have to reevaluate whether I even have enough eggs and bowls to make this recipe. I've read the entire page again, and I can't find what I'm missing. Maybe I'll google another, similar recipe, and they'll be a sauce or side that is mandatory for this dish that everybody already knows about but me, and it will be obvious. Ok, this is something similar, and it's served with some sort of a lemon sauce? I don't think I like lemon sauces. I'm not going to make this, I'm not even sure if I can. I hate trying to find recipes on the internet.