Declarative code and cognitive load

If you had asked me ten years ago about my ability to handle cognitive load, I would have said that I was above average. Today? I would say that I am pretty bad at holding multiple things in my head at once. Whether that is due to aging, fatherhood, multiple-bouts of COVID, humility, or any combination of those, I can’t say.

What I do know is that I am now very interested in reducing cognitive load so that I can do my best work.

In a recent issue of Frontend At Scale, Maxi Ferreira wrote about how declarative code can reduce cognitive load. Giving an example service for file uploading with user permissions, Ferreira proposes a simple list of maps for file extensions and permissions:

This [declarative code solution] doesn’t simplify the relationship between our services in any way, but it does wonders for reducing cognitive load. We might still have some complicated logic between our different services, but now we don’t need to concern ourselves with it. We can now declare our updated rules without having to load a bunch of information in our heads.

This feels like a significant insight and is a great solution to the example problem. You don’t need to know how the system works (at least, not at first), but you can quickly understand what the system does by looking at the validation rules.

Now I’m off to brainstorm about how declarative code could reduce some of the cognitive load in systems I’m working on at Khan Academy. Give the full article a look and let me know what you think.