New chapter: cognitive load

content/books/things-i-learnt/_index.md

@@ -15,6 +15,7 @@ template = "section-contentless.html"
 		* [Design Patters Are Used to Name Solution, Not Find Them](patterns-not-solutions)
 		* [Thinking Data Flow Beats Patterns](data-flow)
 		* [The Magic Number Seven, Plus Or Minus Two](magical-number-seven)
+		* [Cognitive Cost Is The Readability Killer](cognitive-cost)
 		* [Learn The Basics of Functional Programming](functional-programming)
 	* Testing Software
 		* [Unit Tests Are Good, Integration Tests Are Gooder](integration-tests)

content/books/things-i-learnt/cognitive-cost/index.md

@@ -0,0 +1,57 @@
++++
+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"]
++++
+
+"[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).
+
+<!-- more -->
+
+(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
+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.
+
+That's why [types are important](/books/things-i-learnt/data-types) are
+important. 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,
+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") }}

content/books/things-i-learnt/functional-programming/index.md

@@ -65,4 +65,4 @@ more robust code.
   you end up with random values based on the seed, so even there it is a pure
   function.
 
-{{ 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/integration-tests", next_chapter_title="Unit Tests Are Good, Integration Tests Are Gooder") }}
+{{ chapters(prev_chapter_link="/books/things-i-learnt/cognitive-cost", prev_chapter_title="Cognitive Cost Is The Readability Killer", next_chapter_link="/books/things-i-learnt/integration-tests", next_chapter_title="Unit Tests Are Good, Integration Tests Are Gooder") }}

content/books/things-i-learnt/magical-number-seven/index.md

@@ -89,4 +89,4 @@ that, at 4. So simply making `func_1` call `func_2`, which would call
 `func_3`, which would call `func_4` may be enough to overload someone and make
 them lose the track of what the code does.
 
-{{ chapters(prev_chapter_link="/books/things-i-learnt/data-flow", 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") }}
+{{ chapters(prev_chapter_link="/books/things-i-learnt/data-flow", prev_chapter_title="The Magic Number Seven, Plus Or Minus Two", next_chapter_link="/books/things-i-learnt/cognitive-cost", next_chapter_title="Cognitive Cost Is The Readability Killer") }}