Programming with that Disreputable Part of your Brain
summary
Argues that automatic brain processes can be trained to produce better code and describes how: repeated quick judgments on the same codebase, deliberately revisiting borderline code, and using XP practices (TDD, refactoring, YAGNI) to force frequent rewrites. Demonstrates perceptual training analogies from veterinary diagnosis and tango rituals, cites code smells and duplication as teachable patterns, and shows that tooling and routines turn effortful reasoning into fast automatic recognition rather than ad hoc thinking.
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chapters (8)
- 0:00Start
- 2:28A Self-Improvement Goal
- 13:22Training the Automatic System
- 18:31One Up on Veterinarians
- 20:24So: Revisiting Is a Virtue
- 22:56The Situated Programmer
- 27:21A Bit of Set and Setting
- 31:09I Pay Attention to Set and Setting
