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Cognitive load is what matters

(github.com)
1455 points nromiun | 1 comments | 30 Aug 25 12:58 UTC | HN request time: 0.209s | source
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alphazard ◴[30 Aug 25 21:14 UTC] No.45078066[source]▶
The bit about "smart developer quirks" looks suspiciously like the author only understands code that they have written, or is in a specific style that they recognize. That's not the biggest driver behind cognitive load.

Reducing cognitive load comes from the code that you don't have to read. Boundaries between components with strong guarantees let you reason about a large amount of code without ever reading it. Making a change (which the article uses as a benchmark) is done in terms of these clear APIs instead of with all the degrees of freedom available in the codebase.

If you are using small crisp API boundaries to break up the system, "smart developer quirks" don't really matter very much. They are visible in the volume, but not in the surface area.

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1. SickOfItAll ◴[30 Aug 25 21:42 UTC] No.45078237[source]▶
It’s simple, but developers are generally terrible at it, especially the ones who are ‘smart’: Aim to think in terms of contracts and interfaces, not implementation. I don’t want to know what’s in your black box in order to understand how it works; if you make me read your code, you’ve done it wrong.