Programming first principles - 4. Premise - Minimal information

This post (Programming first principles - 4. Premise - Minimal information) was originally published on Sargalias.

Now that we have our requirements, we examine our premises (assumptions).

The first premise is that we can only hold limited information.

This is a consequence of us being human and how the brain works.

Maybe you've heard that we can only remember 7 plus or minus 2 bits of information at any time. (The magical number seven, plus or minus two)

Regardless of the exact truthfulness of that statement, the point remains.

We can only remember / be aware of limited information at any one time.