Cognitive complexity - a new way of measuring understandability

The paper that proposed the cognitive complexity metric.

Abstract

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Cyclomatic complexity was initially formulated as a measurement of the “testability and maintainability” of the control flow of a module. While it excels at measuring the former, its underlying mathematical model is unsatisfactory at producing a value that measures the latter. This white paper describes a new metric that breaks from the use of mathematical models to evaluate code in order to remedy cyclomatic complexity’s shortcomings and produce a measurement that more accurately reflects the relative difficulty of understanding, and therefore of maintaining methods, classes, and applications.