A nice feature of working memory is that although it's limited to around 6† "things", each thing can be any size, if your brain considers it a single unit. This

A nice feature of working memory is that although it's limited to around 6† "things", each thing can be any size, if your brain considers it a single unit. This is called "chunking". So, it's easier to remember the three numbers 34, 765, 812 than the eight numbers 3, 4, 7, 6, 5, 8, 1, 2. Refactoring code into separate functions with descriptive titles is probably a lot like combining numbers. --- † Well, the article says 4–6; I'd always heard the average was around 7.