The Programmer's Brain
by Felienne Hermans · first published 2021
64% recommend29% neutral7% critical
Why HN recommends it
Grounds programming advice in cognitive science research on learning and working memory. It offers practical ways to manage complexity and read code more effectively.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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Felienne Hermans, who seems to be leading this research effort, is also writing "The Programmer's Brain". It has a sort-of "early access" version that I've been reading as chapters have been coming out. From what I've read so far she has been doing her homework in terms of what science really knows about…
on “Hedy is a gradual programming language that helps kids to learn Python” ↗Fascinating stuff. For anyone interested in learning more and also technics for working with code, the Programmer's Brain [0] is an excellent book. [0] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57196550-the-programmer-...
on “Coding and Confusion” ↗…on software development were: - Fundamentals of Software Architecture: An Engineering Approach by Mark Richards and Neal Ford - Multithreaded JavaScript by Thomas Hunter II and Bryan English - The Programmer's Brain by Felienne Hermans
on “Ask HN: What is the best thing you read in 2022?” ↗Any discussion of cognitive load in programming needs to include awareness of this book: The Programmer's Brain: What every programmer needs to know about cognition. By Felienne Hermans https://www.manning.com/books/the-programmers-brain
on “Cognitive load is what matters” ↗The Programmer's Brain by Felienne Hermans
on “Ask HN: What books should I read to improve as a software engineer?” ↗…researcher on programming education at the University of Leiden. If you’re interested in this talk, would definitely recommend checking out her programming language, Hedy (hedycode.com), or her new book, The Programmer’s Brain https://www.manning.com/books/the-programmers-brain
on “How to teach programming and other things (2019) [video]” ↗The Programmer's Brain is my favorite read this year, highly recommend https://www.manning.com/books/the-programmers-brain
on “Felienne Hermans: How patterns in variable names can make code easier to read” ↗I have a book club at work where we often read programming / business related books. We're currently reading 'The Programmer's Brain' (which I highly recommend) and thus far the principal argument in the book has been to work on the building blocks / foundation of a language to improve as a developer. I think part of that is by understanding…
on “Pairing with GPT-4 · Fly” ↗…switches, and doesn't rely on long-term memory too much. I felt this would be the case for a long while, but I only recently read a book where most of my suspicions were proved correct. The title is: "The Programmer's Brain - what every programmer should know about cognition," and I can't recommend it enough. It's a bit boring at times, but it provides a good explanation and practical guidelines for writing code that actively…
on “Toying with Kotlin's Context Receivers” ↗This looks to be an in-depth summary of "The Programmer's Brain" by Felienne Hermans. I recently interviewed Felienne for my podcast and something a lot of people may not know is that this book was born out of her struggles to teach python to 12 year olds. Out of…
on “The Programmer's Brain (2021)” ↗Related: Book Review: The Programmer's Brain - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30896120 - April 2022 (54 comments) The Programmer's Brain - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27734473 - July 2021 (101 comments)
on “The Programmer's Brain (2021)” ↗…and getting instant feedback is just survivorship bias for a certain type of person, not “the way we ought to teach Unix shell” This view is corroborated by the research summarized and presented in the programmer’s brain by Felienne Hermans.
on “The Unix Pipe Card Game” ↗The Programmer's Brain by Felienne Hermans
on “Ask HN: What are you reading these days?” ↗…What do you think? I came to this conclusion based on my experience with learning a very diverse set of programming styles and languages, experience with maintaining long-lived projects at work, and the "Programmer's Brain" book. The book has its moments, though for the most part it's just boring, but it did provide me with a few puzzle pieces I needed to make some sense out of the whole thing.
Has anyone read The Programmer's Brain and have an opinion about it? I'd like to improve my ability to read and understand code and was thinking about reading it. https://www.manning.com/books/the-programmers-brain
on “Writing code is easy, reading it isn't” ↗