Cognitive load is what matters

There are so many buzzwords and best practices out there, but let's focus on something more fundamental. What matters is the amount of confusion developers feel when going through the code.

Last document update: June 2026 . The logo image was taken from Reddit. This is a short version of the text. Toggle the switch to see a longer version. For AI agents | Chinese | Japanese | Spanish | Korean | Turkish Introduction There are so many buzzwords and best practices out there, but most of them have failed. They failed because they were imagined, not real. These ideas were based on aesthetics and subjective judgments. We need something more fundamental, something that can't be wrong. Sometimes we feel confusion going through the code. Confusion costs time and money. Confusion is caused

saved by

• Feranno Liu
• Amir
• Justin Wang
• Michelle Pan
• Kevin Wang
• Ratan Kaliani
• Freeman Jiang
• Aryan Naik
• Hamidah Oderinwale
• Maanav Khaitan
• Dron Hazra
• Sarah Pan

related reading

• GitHub - zakirullin/cognitive-load: 🧠 Cognitive load is what matters · GitHubgithub.com
• GitHub - zakirullin/cognitive-load: 🧠 Cognitive load is what matters · GitHubgithub.com
• Code was our medium for thoughtwattenberger.com
• AI is removing the middle class of software engineeringblog.florianherrengt.com
• claude code is not making your product betterethanding.substack.com
• It's hard to write code for computers, but it's even harder to write code for humans · Erik Bernhardssonerikbern.com
• [2603.22106] From Technical Debt to Cognitive and Intent Debt: Rethinking Software Health in the Age of AIarxiv.org
• The hidden cost of AI-assisted development: cognitive fatiguewarpedvisions.org
• Don’t Outsource Your Thinkingteltam.github.io
• Thoughts on slowing the fuck downmariozechner.at
• Less is more, more or lessjakub.kr
• Prevent cognitive debt by manually retyping LLM-generated code — Ankur Sethi's Lab Notebookankursethi.com