[memorythought]

This paper[1] suggests that there is a 50/50 split amongst programmers in the way in which they trace programs:

> Given a straight-line program, we find half of our participants traced a program from the top-down line-by-line (linearly), and the other half start at the bottom and trace upward based on data dependencies (on-demand)

So it's possible that both viewpoints are correct in some sense and we should pursue languages which allow us to switch between the two viewpoints.

[1] https://arxiv.org/abs/2101.06305

[vaughan]

Interesting read. It’s amazing more people don’t use runtime variable value annotation tools like Wallaby.js, or a debugger.

So much time spent mentally remembering what is in what variable based on the naming.

I often find myself adding “// e.g. foo, bar” to show example cases for some lines of code…like recedes for example. Wallaby.js is a godsend for this though.