principle-minimize-reader-load

Count the layers between a question and its answer, then collapse wrappers with one caller and adapters with no second implementation. Also shrink mutable state scope, preferring pure functions and locals over fields and globals.

Inline pass-through layers that repeat the same methods and arguments, and demand that interfaces hide meaningful decisions rather than expose broad surfaces. A layer must reduce reader load elsewhere by at least as much as it adds.

Keep a layer when it changes the abstraction, hides meaningful decisions, or serves multiple callers or implementations. Remove it when it has one caller, one implementation, or exists only for a hypothetical future need.

Cyclomatic complexity counts code paths, while reader load measures the work a human does to understand code across two axes: layers to trace and hidden state to hold. A flat file with 50 globals can be as hard to reason about as a deep adapter stack.

Move state down the scope ladder: prefer pure function returns over mutations, locals over fields, fields over module state, and module state over globals. Derive values instead of synchronizing duplicated state.