The unit of programming is bounded by comprehension

• There's a limit to how much complexity a person or AI can reason about at once. Call it the complexity horizon.
• Perhaps the natural unit of programming is whatever fits within that horizon: a small program whose behaviour can be understood, changed and tested.
• The unit of change needn't match a module or file. We could extract the relevant behaviour from a large system and work on that smaller representation.
• The size of the production system shouldn't dictate how much complexity its programmer must hold in mind.

• #ai
• #complexity
• #software-engineering