--- title: Cognitive load | daily.dev description: Understanding and managing cognitive load is crucial in software development to minimize confusion and increase productivity. Cognitive load refers to the... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/cognitive-load-osh7s27da twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Cognitive load | daily.dev og:description: Understanding and managing cognitive load is crucial in software development to minimize confusion and increase productivity. Cognitive load refers to the... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/cognitive-load-osh7s27da og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/osh7S27DA.png og:image:alt: Cognitive load og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Cognitive load **[Lobsters](https://daily.dev/sources/lobsters)** · 20 min read · 294 upvotes · 17 comments ## Summary Understanding and managing cognitive load is crucial in software development to minimize confusion and increase productivity. Cognitive load refers to the mental effort required to complete a task and has intrinsic and extraneous types. The post advocates for best practices such as reducing nested conditionals, preferring composition over inheritance, avoiding overuse of small methods, and rethinking microservices and frameworks to reduce unnecessary complexity and mental effort. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Community discussion Top comments from developers on daily.dev. **@idoshamun** · 9 upvotes > Very well written piece about how certain design decisions can make us much slower **@jsnelders** · 4 upvotes > A really well written, easy to consume piece. I have to agree on all points. **@fremi** · 3 upvotes > Cognitive load +1 **@younussaberi** · 2 upvotes > Nicely written by simply the topics which will be using in day to day basis **@sonic66695** · 2 upvotes > Very underrated. This is excellent article, I was doing some of the mentioned tips unintentionally but now I understand why I was doing that :) --- Tags: [#productivity](https://daily.dev/tags/productivity) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/cognitive-load-osh7s27da) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Cognitive load","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/cognitive-load-osh7s27da","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/cognitive-load-osh7s27da"},"datePublished":"2024-10-17T08:19:22.519Z","dateModified":"2024-12-12T08:56:12.166Z","description":"Understanding and managing cognitive load is crucial in software development to minimize confusion and increase productivity. 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I have to agree on all points.","datePublished":"2024-10-21T00:53:26.839Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/osh7S27DA#c-F4hXopU8g","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Jason","url":"https://daily.dev/jsnelders","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--O0TOmw4y--/f_auto/v1715772965/public/noProfile"},"interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":4}},{"@type":"Comment","text":"Cognitive load +1","datePublished":"2024-10-29T15:16:46.998Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/osh7S27DA#c-5K0LmZK6T","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"fremi","url":"https://daily.dev/fremi","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--S8iUPkGr--/f_auto/v1738742903/avatars/avatar_prc4YjwOxrHiMm3lqWAjM"},"interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":3}},{"@type":"Comment","text":"Nicely written by simply the topics which will be using in day to day basis","datePublished":"2024-11-13T06:30:44.585Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/osh7S27DA#c-LfKNQiHlc","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Younus Saberi","url":"https://daily.dev/younussaberi","image":"https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/a/ACg8ocI_G29XTbsB4owUKqoXj5ON4Pvix_ge82AIQUnCnENHsQ=s96-c"},"interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":2}},{"@type":"Comment","text":"Very underrated. This is excellent article, I was doing some of the mentioned tips unintentionally but now I understand why I was doing that :)","datePublished":"2024-11-08T06:37:32.207Z","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/osh7S27DA#c-aTH3L1ZsM","author":{"@type":"Person","name":"Tomas","url":"https://daily.dev/sonic66695","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/s--iahAjD88--/f_auto/v1715338867/avatars/avatar_eMNgnIOuAfHtRDwZZvbCc"},"interactionStatistic":{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":2}}]} ```