Programming first principles - 4. Premise - Minimal information

This post (Programming first principles - 4. Premise - Minimal information) was originally published on Sargalias.

Now that we have our requirements, we examine our premises (assumptions).

The first premise is that we can only hold limited information.

This is a consequence of us being human and how the brain works.

Maybe you've heard that we can only remember 7 plus or minus 2 bits of information at any time. (The magical number seven, plus or minus two)

Regardless of the exact truthfulness of that statement, the point remains.

We can only remember / be aware of limited information at any one time.

This article is part of the "Programming first principles series":

1. Purpose - What this series is about
2. Audience - Who this series is for
3. Requirements of software
4. Premise - Minimal information (this article)
5. Premise - We must understand what we're doing
6. Premise - Minimize propagating changes throughout the system
7. Premise - Complexity increases exponentially with scale
8. First principle - Proof that code works
9. First principle - Principle of least astonishment
10. First principle - Principle of least knowledge
11. First principle - Separation of concerns
12. First principle - Abstraction
13. Side effects

Also suggested:

• When not to apply programming principles
• Why code changes are error prone