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Comment by Hackbraten | Hacker News Reader

From TFA:

> If you treat the usage of tools as "subjects of learning" and deliberately memorize them, it can be done. Such things are usually much lighter and smaller in volume than what is normally seriously treated as subjects of learning, which is why they are not treated as subjects of learning. So if you try to master them deliberately, it's easy to do.

I strongly disagree. Cognitive load is a thing that has different impact on individual people. Also, rote memorizing mental models, sometimes difficult-to-grasp ones due to bugs and poor UX design, is never inherently "easy."

"It's easy" is a fallacy, one that I keep hearing especially from healthy male developers, who I think sometimes lack empathy and awareness that not everyone's brain, cognition, and perception works exactly like their own.

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This is what I think. I admit that the line between the main task and the tools is blurry, but usually the difficulty of the tools tends to be proportional to the difficulty of the main task. As you said, if it's a simple task done with limited cognitive ability, the tools for it are also likely to be simple. Another point is that while there is an upper limit to how difficult tools are to use, there is no lower limit, so there are always many tools that can be mastered simply.

And my view that people overestimate the difficulty of learning them can be shown by this example. If someone made 300 more keyboard shortcuts for a code editor, you'd probably think it's crazy and a mess. But for people learning a foreign language, memorizing 300 completely new words is just everyday life, and it can be done in a day or a few days. Also, this is a long story to tell, but in my experience, it's easier to memorize keyboard shortcuts than foreign language words.

Hear hear. Also, if we include programming paradigms in the category of "tools", I've found that having more options has decreased my programming velocity, as I get distracted while coding down one path by all the other methods which might be better. It's like Plath's fig tree. I deliver better code now but I could be 3x faster when all I had was a hammer.

Anyone who says “it’s easy” might be having an easy go of it, or they might lack the self-awareness to realize the amount of energy and cortisol they are burning through when they accomplish the task.

“Easy” things today can mysteriously cause burnout tomorrow. It’s easy to mistake the brain chemicals that lubricate effort for lack of friction.

Also, memorizing mental modals has a sort of path dependence to it. Once you have one in your brain, it’s hard to replace, even if it sucks.

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