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134 lines
5.5 KiB
134 lines
5.5 KiB
11 months ago
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<title>Julio Biason .Me 4.3</title>
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<div class="sidebar-about">
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<a href="https://blog.juliobiason.me"><h1>Julio Biason .Me 4.3</h1></a>
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<p class="lead">Old school dev living in a 2.0 dev world</p>
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<div class="content container">
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<div class="post">
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<h1 class="post-title">Things I Learnt The Hard Way - Cognitive Cost Is The Readability Killer</h1>
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<span class="post-date">
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2019-06-26
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<a href="https://blog.juliobiason.me/tags/books/">#books</a>
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<a href="https://blog.juliobiason.me/tags/things-i-learnt/">#things i learnt</a>
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<a href="https://blog.juliobiason.me/tags/cognitive-dissonance/">#cognitive dissonance</a>
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<a href="https://blog.juliobiason.me/tags/cognitive-cost/">#cognitive cost</a>
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</span>
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<p>"<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance">Cognitive dissonance</a>"
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is a fancy way of saying "I need to remember two (or more) different and
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contradicting things at the same time to understand this." Keeping those
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different things in your head creates a cost and it keeps accumulating the
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more indirect the things are ('cause you'll have to keep all those in your
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head).</p>
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<span id="continue-reading"></span>
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<p>(Disclaimer: I like to use the expression "cognitive dissonance" to make me
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sound smarter. I usually explain what it means, though.)</p>
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<p>To give you an example of a (very mild) cognitive cost, I'll show you this:</p>
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<ul>
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<li>You have a function called <code>sum()</code>. It does the sum of the numbers of a
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list.</li>
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<li>You have another function, called <code>is_pred()</code>. It gets a value and, if it
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fits the predicate -- a test, basically -- returns True; otherwise,
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returns False.</li>
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</ul>
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<p>So, pretty simple, right? One function sums numbers and another returns a
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boolean.</p>
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<p>Now, what would you say if I shown you this, in Python:</p>
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<pre data-lang="python" style="background-color:#2b303b;color:#c0c5ce;" class="language-python "><code class="language-python" data-lang="python"><span style="color:#96b5b4;">sum</span><span>(</span><span style="color:#bf616a;">is_pred</span><span>(x) </span><span style="color:#b48ead;">for </span><span>x </span><span style="color:#b48ead;">in </span><span>my_list)
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</span></code></pre>
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<p>Wait, didn't I say that <code>sum()</code> sums numbers? And that <code>is_pred()</code> returns a
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boolean. How can I sum booleans? What's the expected result of True + True +
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False?</p>
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<p>Sadly, this works. Because someone, long time ago, didn't think booleans were
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worth a thing and used an integer instead. And everyone else since then did
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the same stupid mistake.</p>
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<p>But, for you, you'll now read a line that says "summing a boolean list returns
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a number". And that's two different, disparate things that you suddenly have
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to keep in mind when reading that line.</p>
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<p>That's why <a href="/books/things-i-learnt/data-types">types are important</a>. Also,
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this may sound a bit like <a href="/books/things-i-learnt/magical-number-seven">the magical number
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seven</a>, 'cause you have to keep
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two things at your mind at the same thing but, although that's not near seven,
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they are not the same, with opposite (for weird meanings of "opposite", in
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this case) meanings.</p>
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<div>
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<div style="float:left">
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<< <a href="/books/things-i-learnt/magical-number-seven">The Magic Number Seven, Plus Or Minus Two</a>
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</div>
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<div style="float:right">
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<a href="/books/things-i-learnt/functional-programming">Learn The Basics of Functional Programming</a> >>
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