Linus Torvalds, Creator of Git and Linux, on reducing cognitive load

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Linus Torvalds criticized a Meta engineer's code for creating unnecessary abstractions that increase cognitive load. The piece argues that good code should minimize context switches and mental overhead for both humans and AI systems. Sometimes code duplication is preferable to complex helper functions when it keeps logic self-contained and easier to understand. The principle of "Please Repeat Yourself" can reduce cognitive burden, especially as AI coding tools become more prevalent.

How to Not Write "Garbage Code" (by Linus Torvalds)

To abstract or not to abstract. That is the question.

DRY is good but it is not always required. If you work in a team with low head count, try to avoid DRY and make sure every flow work indenpently, cause the logic can change very often and DRY will really dry you out.

Linus : “No. This is garbage and it came in too late […] This adds various garbage […] And by “garbage” I really mean it. This is stuff that nobody should ever send me […] That thing makes the world actively a worse place to live.&quot;
Author: “One thing to not take from Linus’s point: the tone and general rudeness. Everyone works differently, obviously, but being nicer never hurts :). Being rude makes committing code a risk. Nobody wants to write code and risk the chance of being berated publicly like above.”

I think the path of every engineer ends up being:
No abstractions -&gt; Some abstractions -&gt; Full abstractions -&gt; Some abstractions -&gt; No abstractions

From personal experience, I agree with Torvalds.
Years ago, I was playing around with different languages and programming patterns. It feels like an achievement to deduplicate all possible code in your project and have neat little helper functions for everything, but once you go away from the project for a couple of months and then come back, everything is so unreadable, because you have to dig through so many layers and abstractions to actually know, what’s going on.
It depends on the project, especially size and inherent complexity of the problem solved, but in general, one should always take a balanced approach to your methodology of abstraction and incidental depth of functionality.