Non-technical Mitigation Strategies

[nitsanavni]

Hi!

Great stuff!

WDYT about the following non-technical strategies to address cognitive load when faced with unfamiliar code:

1. While trying to understand a piece of code: a. Take notes of micro-understandings - this can serve as an external persistent memory, extended cognition b. Even better: encode your micro-understandings into the code with micro-refactorings, comments, docstrings, renames, etc.

   This can combat loss of context when interupted for example.

2. Chunking: Assuming we can hold only four chunks in mind at a time. Chunks can differ greatly in cognitive value. I beleive that through delberate practice, we can chunk together smaller chunks into larger ones, allowing us to tackle a larger range of cognitive tasks. See @jbrains writing and talks about this.

3. Shared burden through Teaming Maybe a team has more cognitive power than a single person?

More?

Thanks!