Cognitive Psychology and the Zen of Code
summary
Claim: human working memory holds about seven plus or minus two chunks, scanning each item takes ~38 milliseconds, and recognition trumps recall. Concrete consequences for Ruby: avoid sprawling methods, deep nesting, long variable lists and clever use of method_missing that hides behavior. Minimize surprises, chunk related data, prefer recognizable names and shapes, and tell a clear procedural story in code so readers spend cognitive effort on design decisions, not on decoding syntax.
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chapters (6)
- 0:00Introduction
- 0:40Abelson and Sussman
- 1:56Memory
- 4:33Audio
- 6:13Longterm memory
- 7:38Cognitive Psychology
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