Stop introducing accidental complexity

Learn the difference between intrinsic and extraneous cognitive load and get more of the best 2024 articles to learn from.

Dec 31, 2024

2024 is closing out, today is the last day 🕛

Everybody is doing recaps, which makes me feel I should do one as well. Here is a short one.

In 2024, I published the first Top of the Tech article on November 29th 🙌. In one month, I read tons of content and published seven digests summarising the best reads that came my way 🚀. The newsletter’s audience grew from 0 to 73 subscribers 📈.

In 2025 my goals are to:

keep the writing cadence of publishing a digest at least once a week,
publish some of my original content,
do at least one guest post on other newsletters and
grow my audience to 1K+ subscribers.

This week there are great end-of-the-year recaps that give you access to top articles of some great authors. One of the qualities that I most appreciate with engineers is being concious about eliminating unnecessary congnitive load and accidental complexity. Artem gave some great examples of how you can do that in the below article.

Happy New Year everyone! 🎄☃️

Cognitive load is what matters

Artem Zakirullin

This is a great article on cognitive load 🧠. It is very related to the concepts of essential and accidental complexities. Accidental complexity makes projects hard to understand, and it is exactly what we engineers tend to add. The article lists twelve examples showcasing a high risk of introducing unnecessary cognitive load.

Audience: Software Engineers
Value: Learn how not to make your code hard to understand
ToT Rating: ⭐⭐🌟

Ex-Meta Staff Eng & YC Startup Cofounder | Rahul Pandey

The Developing Dev

In this week’s episode, Ryan hosts Rahul Pandey, who shares his career path from a startup acquired by Pinterest and Meta to being a founder in his YC-funded startup. There is some great advice on being intentional about your career growth and taking things into your own hands.

Audience: Software Engineers
Value: Learn how to grow your career faster
ToT Rating: ⭐⭐

Four Simple Ways to Say “No”

Path to Staff Engineer

Saying “No” to people can feel uncomfortable. However, it is crucial to manage your time and impact effectively. As its name suggests, this article gives you four very practical strategies for saying “No”.

Audience: All tech professionals
Value: Learn how to say “No”
ToT Rating: ⭐⭐

Best of 2024 + Special offer on subscriptions

The Caring Techie Newsletter

This is one more 2024 recap that gives you a great entry point on some amazing content on influence, communication, emotional intelligence, and career growth. Click it to and I am sure you will find an article that sparks your interest and that you will learn from.

Audience: Software Engineers/Engineering Managers
Value: Learn about soft skills in engineering
ToT Rating: ⭐

What Writing a Newsletter for a Year Taught Me

Besides Code

In this short recap, David Weiss shares three lessons he learned from writing his newsletter for one year. I find the lessons quite relevant for anyone aiming to start a side hustle or a startup. He talks about starting small (think MVPs), optimizing your time (the most precious asset that you have), and finding your why (otherwise, you will most likely give up). I like that David decided to celebrate the effort (1 year of writing) and not the outcome (X amount of subscribers). Reminds me of Sundar Pichai’s statement on rewarding effort not the outcomes.

Audience: Anyone really
Value: Lessons for starting your side hustle
ToT Rating: ⭐

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