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Cognitive load is what matters

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1457 points nromiun | 1 comments | 30 Aug 25 12:58 UTC | HN request time: 0.209s | source
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exclipy ◴[30 Aug 25 20:51 UTC] No.45077894[source]▶
This was my main takeaway from A Philosophy Of Software Design by John Ousterhout. It is the best book on this subject and I recommend it to every software developer.

Basically, you should aim to minimise complexity in software design, but importantly, complexity is defined as "how difficult is it to make changes to it". "How difficult" is largely determined by the amount of cognitive load necessary to understand it.

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hinkley ◴[30 Aug 25 21:23 UTC] No.45078135[source]▶
It’s a pain in the ass to source a copy of this book without giving Jeff Bezos all the money. If anyone reading this thread knows John, could you bring this to his attention?

I even tried calling the bookstore on his campus and they said try back at the beginning of a semester, they didn’t have any copies.

My local book store could not source me a copy, and neither IIRC could Powell’s.

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1. tialaramex ◴[30 Aug 25 23:01 UTC] No.45078758[source]▶
That sucks. Ordinarily although a weird volume there's no demand for won't be fast a bookshop should be able to get anything in print. Is there some reason it's specific to this book do you think?