I have these dreams as well and several times have actually "solved" a problem in my sleep, woken up in the middle of the night, coded it and it worked. Someti

I have these dreams as well and several times have actually "solved" a problem in my sleep, woken up in the middle of the night, coded it and it worked. Sometimes I feel like coding triggers some area of the brain that is slightly autistic or aspergers-like, and I perseverate on it. If I reach a breakthrough I feel better. I learned to say this to myself - "if I am stuck in a loop, then remember I might need to break out of the loop" - but I mean that not in the programming sense entirely, more behavioral. Noticing that my brain can actually "think inside the algorithm", even in my sleep, has numerous times caused me to wonder if our brains are capable of essentially "running code" and that maybe neural networks and the like may really be onto something. But that's a different tangent.