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The Mental Game of Python - Raymond Hettinger

SF Python

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YouTube
  • Recommended by 3 people: 3 on Hacker News.
  • A classic. People kept recommending it from 2019 to 2023.
  • Presented by Raymond Hettinger, Python Core Developer

Intermediate. Assumes working knowledge.

130K views7 years ago3 recommendations

Programming languagesTools and practicePythonDeveloper productivitySimplicity and complexity

Raymond Hettinger shares cognitive strategies and mental habits for managing complexity, chunking problems, and reducing working memory load while programming.

This talk was presented at PyBay2019 - 4th annual Bay Area Regional Python conference. See pybay.com for more details about PyBay and click SHOW MORE for more information about this talk. Description or "Strategies learned from coaching, teaching, and StackOverflow" If you work with thousands of developers, ranging from the experienced to the aspirational, you can see what patterns of thought seem to confer success. Raymond shares what he’s seen that works best for developing problem solving skills, learning how to learn, how to get unstuck, and reliable strategies for managing complexity. The talk includes live coding examples to make these ideas concrete. Abstract Original slides: About the speaker Python core developer. Certified Public Accountant. Freelance programmer/consultant/trainer. Husband to Rachel. Father to Matthew. Sponsor Acknowledgement This and other PyBay2019 videos are via the help of our media partner AlphaVoice (alphavoice.io/)! #pybay #pybay2019 #python #python3

Why it's here

3 people recommend this

What people say. Engineers recommend this talk for its practical advice on managing cognitive load and breaking down complex programming problems.

Stormwalkeron Hacker News • Recommends

On “Ask HN: Best Talks of 2019?”

My favorite talk of this year is Raymond Hettinger talking about mental gymnastics which helps you to structure your problems into ones that which you can solve. The mental game of Python: link to this video
View on Hacker News

meowfaceon Hacker News • Recommends

On “List of YouTube channels for improving web development and programming skills”

For programming, yes, especially if you're a beginner. But for more conceptual aspects of software engineering and system design, or tutorials on new technologies, videos can sometimes be useful. Here's a good recent one by Raymond Hettinger on making things easier for yourself when programming, such as ways of reducing how many things you'll need to keep in working memory at once. It actually does directly involve a lot of pure code so it's maybe not the best example of what I described, but it's mostly focused on cognition and is generalizable to programming in any language, or possibly doing any kind of demanding mental work in any field. "The Mental Game of Python" - link to this video
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bionhowardon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Ask HN: Best resources on abstracting and dealing with complexity”

Great question, I personally recommend: 1. Simple Made Easy by Rich Hickey (video link ) 2. Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows (pdf link ) 3. Raymond Hettinger’s content about CHUNKING is classic for this (one example video link to this video ) 4. The classic tome on Abstraction is Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid, by Doug Hofstadter ( link ) 5. Finally, I’ll cut myself at lucky number five by pointing you toward Jüergen (You-Again!) Schmidhuber’s fascinating webpage: link Honorable mention to Margaret Hamilton’s T-Maps and F-Maps. Use a hierarchical numbered outline. Zoom in and out of the fractal network. Remember your working memory holds seven (7) concepts, plus or minus two…
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