Cognitive Debt: When Velocity Exceeds Comprehension
← Beyond the Code The engineer shipped seven features in a single sprint. DORA metrics looked immaculate. The promotion packet practically wrote itself. Six months later, an architectural change required modifying those features. No one on the team could explain why certain components existed or how they interacted. The engineer who built them stared at her own code like a stranger’s. Code has become cheaper to produce than to perceive. The Comprehension Lag When an engineer writes code manually, two parallel processes occur. The first is production: characters appear in files, tests get written, systems change. The second is absorption: mental models form, edge cases become intuitive, architectural relationships solidify into understanding. These processes are coupled. The…
