6 Triangulation
Some years ago I visited a client who wanted my help with their legacy code base. I had the opportunity to interview a few of the developers, and I asked the newest team member how long it took before he felt that he could contribute on his own.
“Three months,” he replied.
It took him that long to memorise the code base to a degree where he felt confident editing it. I saw some of it, and it was truly complex. There were more than seven things going on. In fact, there were easily more than seventy things going on in some methods.
It takes time to learn to navigate such a code base, but it isn’t impossible. You may think that this disproves the thesis that the human brain can only keep track of seven things. I think, however, ...
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