Cognitive Complexity

Cognitive Complexity is a measure of how difficult a unit of code is to intuitively understand. Unlike Cyclomatic Complexity, which determines how difficult your code will be to test, Cognitive Complexity tells you how difficult your code will be to read and comprehend.

A method's cognitive complexity is based on a few simple rules:

• Code is not considered more complex when it uses shorthand that the language provides for collapsing multiple statements into one
• Code is considered more complex for each "break in the linear flow of the code"
• Code is considered more complex when "flow breaking structures are nested"

Further reading

• Cognitive Complexity docs
• Cognitive Complexity: A new way of measuring understandability

Compound statements (on the same line) are generally discouraged.

While sometimes it's okay to put an if/for/while with a small body
on the same line, never do this for multi-clause statements.
Also avoid folding such long lines!

Always use a def statement instead of an assignment statement that
binds a lambda expression directly to a name.

Okay: if foo == 'blah':\n    do_blah_thing()
Okay: do_one()
Okay: do_two()
Okay: do_three()

E701: if foo == 'blah': do_blah_thing()
E701: for x in lst: total += x
E701: while t < 10: t = delay()
E701: if foo == 'blah': do_blah_thing()
E701: else: do_non_blah_thing()
E701: try: something()
E701: finally: cleanup()
E701: if foo == 'blah': one(); two(); three()
E702: do_one(); do_two(); do_three()
E703: do_four();  # useless semicolon
E704: def f(x): return 2*x
E731: f = lambda x: 2*x

Trailing blank lines are superfluous.

Okay: spam(1)
W391: spam(1)\n

However the last line should end with a new line (warning W292).