6 ms·

Obviously this is a very personal thing, but that is not the case for me. I often can “see” entire chunks of code in my head, and typing out those 20 lines ends

by GuiA 7y ago

Obviously this is a very personal thing, but that is not the case for me. I often can “see” entire chunks of code in my head, and typing out those 20 lines ends up feeling slow and frustrating. Of course that’s not systematically the case - in many instances, I am thinking as I am writing the code. But for many straightforward control functions, tests, constructors/destructors, etc. the keyboard absolutely feels like a bottleneck. (There is the orthogonal debate that perhaps a better language would allow me to express more concisely these things that feel straightforward)

cambalache 7y ago
For me too. Something like auto-completion for the brain. Not in the "let me complete this command/file name for you" But in the "let me write immediately and correctly the 20 lines of code for the exact procedure you think you need and you just thought in a second". I know it sounds like it is impossible now, but who knows? Maybe it will start with some macros for the brain.
- youareostriches 7y ago
  That might not always be possible. Sometimes I don’t know the full definition of the function upfront; I have to discover/invent it one line at a time and can’t do that without pausing and thinking about the line I just wrote.
edna314 7y ago
I know exactly what kind of frustration you mean. I think this frustration often comes about, because writing code up is a first quality control and it might seem unnecessary for straight forward stuff to be quality controlled. While spending less work on trivial stuff seems reasonable, if I do introduce a bug in trivial code it will be harder to track it down, because I will always first check whether or not all the tricky parts work. On top of that you indirectly incentivize yourself for thinking something is trivial, because it would mean less work and somehow my brain is very good at tricking me into doing less work in situations where obviously more work is required. So, even if it was possible to paste code from the brain I would recommend reading it again carefully and then the speed advantages are gone. The only situation where you wouldn’t need it are really repetitive tasks, but in these situations you can have macros/snippets.

by GuiA 7y ago

cambalache 7y ago

For me too. Something like auto-completion for the brain. Not in the "let me complete this command/file name for you" But in the "let me write immediately and correctly the 20 lines of code for the exact procedure you think you need and you just thought in a second". I know it sounds like it is impossible now, but who knows? Maybe it will start with some macros for the brain.

youareostriches 7y ago
That might not always be possible. Sometimes I don’t know the full definition of the function upfront; I have to discover/invent it one line at a time and can’t do that without pausing and thinking about the line I just wrote.

edna314 7y ago

I know exactly what kind of frustration you mean. I think this frustration often comes about, because writing code up is a first quality control and it might seem unnecessary for straight forward stuff to be quality controlled. While spending less work on trivial stuff seems reasonable, if I do introduce a bug in trivial code it will be harder to track it down, because I will always first check whether or not all the tricky parts work. On top of that you indirectly incentivize yourself for thinking something is trivial, because it would mean less work and somehow my brain is very good at tricking me into doing less work in situations where obviously more work is required. So, even if it was possible to paste code from the brain I would recommend reading it again carefully and then the speed advantages are gone. The only situation where you wouldn’t need it are really repetitive tasks, but in these situations you can have macros/snippets.