The Programmer's Brain

What Every Programmer Needs to Know About Cognition

By: Felienne Hermans

Narrated by: Christopher Kendrick

Your brain responds in a predictable way when it encounters new or difficult tasks. This unique book teaches you concrete techniques rooted in cognitive science that will improve the way you learn and think about code. You will learn:

• Fast and effective ways to master new programming languages
• Speed-reading skills to quickly comprehend new code
• Techniques to unravel the meaning of complex code
• Ways to learn new syntax and keep it memorized
• Writing code that is easy for others to read
• Picking the right names for your variables
• Making your codebase more understandable to newcomers
• Onboarding new developers to your team

Learn how to optimize your brain’s natural cognitive processes to read code more easily, write code faster, and pick up new languages in much less time. This book will help you through the confusion you feel when faced with strange and complex code, and explain a codebase in ways that can make a new team member productive in days!

About the Technology

Take advantage of your brain’s natural processes to be a better programmer. Techniques based in cognitive science make it possible to learn new languages faster, improve productivity, reduce the need for code rewrites, and more.

About the Book

The Programmer’s Brain unlocks the way we think about code. It offers scientifically sound techniques that can radically improve the way you master new technology, comprehend code, and memorize syntax. You’ll learn how to benefit from productive struggle and turn confusion into a learning tool. Along the way, you’ll discover how to create study resources as you become an expert at teaching yourself and bringing new colleagues up to speed.

About the Audience

For programmers who have experience working in more than one language.

About the Author

Dr. Felienne Hermans is an associate professor at Leiden University in the Netherlands. She has spent the last decade researching programming, how to learn, and how to teach it.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2021 Manning Publications (P)2021 Manning Publications

really pretty informative. good for audiobook

really pretty informative. good for audiobook. awesome understanding of programmers thinking. it really gets the idea

Useful framework for introspection

I’ve listened to this a couple of times now, which says something. There are some useful tools and ideas herein, with actionable advice. The authors references are well worth following up. The actual reading is clear and well paced. Overall I think the book is well worth the time it takes to listen to it and it works well as an audio book.

Hidden gem

I found this book very helpful as a software developer. I was able to take away from this book numerous strategies and mental models to view my daily work. The book is tied closely to academic research giving the book much depth. It’s nothing like those opinionated programming books that try to explain one trick concept to make you a superstar coder. The narration was extremely clear and understandable. This is definitely a hidden gem.

An audiobook asking you to read

Unlistenable.
Every 2 minutes you are asked to take a break and read sentences or code. The physical book might good but the audio experience is horrible, they probably just read the book word by word and made no adaptations.

Every 10min you are asked to "look at the code"

They should adapt this book and not just read it word by word. I listened the first 3 hours, and all the chapters so far ask you to look at the image/diagram, or look at the code, this is a terrible experience when you are only listening. This should not be an audiobook at all, they need to adapt it first.