Felienne Hermans

The Programmer's Brain explores the way your brain works when it's thinking about code. In it, you'll master practical ways to apply these cognitive principles to your daily programming life. You'll improve your code comprehension by turning confusion into a learning tool, and pick up awesome techniques for reading code and quickly memorizing syntax. This practical guide includes tips for creating your own flashcards and study resources that can be applied to any new language you want to master. By the time you're done, you'll not only be better at teaching yourself--you'll be an expert at bringing new colleagues and junior programmers up to speed.

What Every Programmer Needs to Know about Cognition

The Programmer's Brain

Abdülhamit

“Sometimes the code you are reading is just too complex for you to fully understand. Because reading code is not an activity that most programmers practice often, you might find that you lack strategies to deal with reading code you do not understand. Common techniques such as “read it again” and “give up” are not helpful.

That’s because research has shown that actively trying to remember makes memories stronger. Even if you do not know the full answer, memories are easier to find when you have often tried to find them before.

“In summary, you remember the longest if you study over a longer period. That doesn’t mean you need to spend more time studying; it means you should study at more spaced-out intervals. Revisiting your set of flashcards once a month will be enough to help your memory in the long run, and it’s also relatively doable! This is, of course, in stark contrast with formal education, where we try to cram all the knowledge into one semester, or with bootcamps that seek to educate people in three months. Knowledge learned in such a way only sticks if you continue to repeat what you’ve learned frequently afterward.”

Julien Sobczak

The programmer's memory (not brain) at work

The book is remarkably well-written. The author explains how our short-term memory (STM) and our long-term memory (LTM) help the working memory when reading, writing, thinking, and collaborating on code. She extensively uses research papers and classic experiments to introduce the key concepts, and making this research accessible is for sure one of the strengths of this book, but also its main weakness.

There is more to the programmer's brain than what has been studied. Programming is a creative activity. Often, the most difficult problems are solved when running or when taking a shower. The book completely omitted this subject about the role of both hemispheres, which plays a key role in understanding how programmers operate on large codebases.

What I like about this book is it demonstrates you don't have to feel stupid when facing a new task, or a new problem. Your cognitive load is just too high, and the book will help you find strategies to reduce it, and move on.

The book will benefit developers with just a few years of experience or experienced developers that mentor newcomers and have forgotten what it feels to learn programming. For novice programmers, I think learning programming must be fun, and trying to learn it by optimizing how your brain works is not the best approach in my opinion.

The Programmer's Brain What Every Programmer Needs to Know about Cognition

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