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I don’t think these are two separate camps. Rather everyone has a value - let’s call it S - which is the maximum size and complexity of a program they can hold in their head. When the program’s size is smaller than S then they use strategy 1, when it’s larger they use strategy 2.

When you are a beginner your S is close to zero, as you gain experience you develop increasingly better compression to be able to grow your effective S, but it’s never infinite. There’s always some size program where you will devolve to strategy 2, and all programs tend to grow in complexity until they reach the point where nobody understands them, like some kind of complexity Peter principle.



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