Effect of perceptual load on performance within IDE in people with ADHD symptoms
As an engineer for 10+ years with pretty severe ADHD (unmedicated, I cannot usually even read more than a few pages of a book before either losing focus or feeling drained) I have always been aware of how much my performance fluctuates based on the cognitive load of dealing with the code I am currently working with, and how it is displayed. I half-jokingly tend to describe it to people as having a &quot;small brain buffer&quot; where while I can understand (and design and implement) very complex things, it is easy for me to flounder when debugging if I feel unable to visually see or mentally hold the entire problem in my head at once. This is especially true if the code isn&#x27;t mine.<p>It is for this reason that I try to write what I feel is very obvious or self-explanatory code, why I try to keep functions&#x2F;modules as simple as possible and ideally not longer in length than I can see on my screen at once (when possible), and why I almost exclusively join small&#x2F;new teams who don&#x27;t yet have an enormous codebase that I&#x27;ll have to wrap my head around. I am never done tweaking the UIs of the editors I use to maximize my ability to work around these things.