I hadn’t thought about the shape of code much as a refactoring heuristic, but it’s neat to see a post about the concept of code shape. I found examining code s

I hadn’t thought about the shape of code much as a refactoring heuristic, but it’s neat to see a post about the concept of code shape. I found examining code shape to be an effective method for assisting in algorithm recall in some college courses. Now working with larger codebases in industry, I find it really useful for navigating around large files or remembering where to go for particular snippets of code. I wonder if this phenomenon has anything to do with different spatial tricks people use for memorization and recall (the “memory palace” technique). I’ve never thought of myself as having good spatial reasoning at all, but this kind of thing makes me question the boundary between “spatial” and symbolic / verbal thinking.