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title = "Things I Learnt The Hard Way - Cognitive Cost Is The Readability Killer"
date = 2019-06-26
[taxonomies]
tags = ["en-au", "books", "things i learnt", "cognitive dissonance", "cognitive cost"]
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"[Cognitive dissonance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance)"
is a fancy way of saying "I need to remember two (or more) different and
contradicting things at the same time to understand this." Keeping those
different things in your head creates a cost and it keeps accumulating the
more indirect the things are ('cause you'll have to keep all those in your
head).
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(Disclaimer: I like to use the expression "cognitive dissonance" to make me
sound smarter. I usually explain what it means, though.)
To give you an example of a (very mild) cognitive cost, I'll show you this:
* You have a function called `sum()`. It does the sum of the numbers of a
list.
* You have another function, called `is_pred()`. It gets a value and, if it
fits the predicate -- a test, basically -- returns True; otherwise,
returns False.
So, pretty simple, right? One function sums numbers and another returns a
boolean.
Now, what would you say if I shown you this, in Python:
```python
sum(is_pred(x) for x in my_list)
```
Wait, didn't I say that `sum()` sums numbers? And that `is_pred()` returns a
5 years ago
boolean. How can I sum booleans? What's the expected result of True + True +
False?
Sadly, this works. Because someone, long time ago, didn't think booleans were
worth a thing and used an integer instead. And everyone else since then did
the same stupid mistake.
But, for you, you'll now read a line that says "summing a boolean list returns
a number". And that's two different, disparate things that you suddenly have
to keep in mind when reading that line.
5 years ago
That's why [types are important](/books/things-i-learnt/data-types). Also,
this may sound a bit like [the magical number
seven](/books/things-i-learnt/magical-number-seven), 'cause you have to keep
two things at your mind at the same thing but, although that's not near seven,
5 years ago
they are not the same, with opposite (for weird meanings of "opposite", in
this case) meanings.
{{ chapters(prev_chapter_link="/books/things-i-learnt/magical-number-seven", prev_chapter_title="The Magic Number Seven, Plus Or Minus Two", next_chapter_link="/books/things-i-learnt/functional-programming", next_chapter_title="Learn The Basics of Functional Programming") }}