Computational thinking

On computational modeling, metascience, reproducibility, bayesian methods & more

Author

Vencislav Popov

Are Cognitive Representations Propositional, Analog, or Something Else?

cognitive science
explainer
2026
This post was motivated by a question from a student after my introductory cognitive psychology lecture. I wrote it as a short, self-contained explainer and then realized it would also work well as a blog post.
Feb 20, 2026
9 min

Simple rules, hard problems and the emergence of meaning in mathematics

math
philosophy
emergence
essay
meaning
structure
2026

What are mathematical objects? And what does it mean to understand something that by some accounts doesn’t really exist?

Feb 11, 2026
13 min

Package management and reproducibility are a nightmare

R
R package
2026
package management
reproducibility
workflow
2026

I continue my love-hate relationship with R, renv and Quarto

Feb 3, 2026
4 min

Open Science needs reliable infrastructure

open science
reproducibility
academic publishing
2025

After OSF’s October 2025 redesign, I discovered that eight years of DOI-linked preprints and materials were silently hidden by an automated spam flag. What happened, how it was resolved, and what it reveals about trust in open science infrastructure.

Nov 6, 2025
18 min

aRt-o Pollo

R
art
2025

I explore a strange light-physics idea and turn it into generative art in R.

Feb 21, 2025
8 min

R love you, R hate you

R
programming
2025

I’ve grown to loveR despite many of its quirks. Perhaps this is just Stockholm Syndrome.

Feb 21, 2025
12 min

Reduce friction for creating Quarto blog posts

workflow
shell
2024

I teach myself how to code simple shell scripts to automate some annoying tasks

Nov 17, 2024
6 min

Rethinking my approach to computational projects and reproducibility

workflow
reproducibility
R
git
targets
project management
2024

I’ve spent more time debugging my workflow than actually doing research. There has to be a better way.

Nov 17, 2024
9 min

Taking a stand on open peer review

academic publishing
peer review
open science
2024

I will no longer review for journals that do not publish reviews alongside the work

Aug 4, 2024
2 min

Introducing the Bayesian Measurement Modeling R Package (bmm)

R
modeling
bayesian
R package
2024

Making Bayesian measurement modeling in psychology accessible, reliable & efficient

Jun 13, 2024
14 min

Locally Ignoring Git Files Without Affecting Others’ .gitignore

git
GitHub
reproducibility
workflow
collaboration
2024

How to exclude files from version control without affecting other developers’ .gitignore configuration

May 24, 2024
4 min

Working with multiple versions of an R package

R
reproducibility
package management
R package
2024

After being dissatisfied with existing solutions, I wrote a package to do that

Mar 3, 2024
7 min
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Citation

BibTeX citation:
@online{popov,
  author = {Popov, Vencislav},
  title = {Computational Thinking},
  url = {https://venpopov.com/posts/},
  langid = {en}
}
For attribution, please cite this work as:
Popov, Vencislav. n.d. “Computational Thinking.” https://venpopov.com/posts/.