[jorgeleo]

I agree with you. People use "Cognitive load" as meaning to say "people should be thinking the way I think, because to me that is very easy and straightforward".

The load gets bigger not because the code is more complex, but because we reason about problems differently, we build different mental models of the solution, and if these models are too different, then the cognitive load gets heavy.

The other side of the coin is that books like Code Complete go a long way into making those mental models more clearly stated.

Solving the underlying problem (big variety of mental models) means standardizing how we thing about solving programming problems. The GOF book, head in that direction... then again, they become used for the sake of implementing a pattern instead of solving a specific problem. I think this is one of the things that keeps software development in the craft area, as opposed to engineering. but that would be a different rant