Chunking & Naming | #50

In our continuing conversation about refactoring, I want to go a little abstract today, and talk about chunking and naming. Naturally, a topic this important has already been addressed by a stupid joke in the movie Airplane!, so we'll start there. A passenger is approached by a steward, asking if he might be able to help with a problem in the cockpit. He says, "The cockpit! What is it?". She says, "It's the little room at the front of the plane where the pilots sit, but that's not important right now." The number of things one can hold in one's head at one time -- mental bandwidth -- is quite small. If the things are entirely unrelated to one another, it's on the order of 4-6 things. By contrast, the number of things one can need to hold in one's head at one time -- context bandwidth -- is ridiculously large. If the context is "reality", it's effectively infinite. But far smaller contexts than reality, everyday ones, still dwarf mental bandwidth.  --- You can read the full transcription of this podcast over on GeePawHill.org. Any feedback, you can always tweet @GeePawHill on Twitter, or drop a voice message via the voice messages link here on Anchor. If you are interested in becoming more involved in the Change-Harvesting community, click here to learn about GeePaw's Camerata.