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Aphantasia. I don't do "visual" I have an odd form though, I do maps of relationships - including obligations and expected deliveries. Works largely for peop

Aphantasia. I don't do "visual" I have an odd form though, I do maps of relationships - including obligations and expected deliveries. Works largely for people and places too. And yeah, including likelihoods of delivery or accuracy of result. So I have a default rule of "always check inputs". One can always take a section of the map and - like algebra - substitute a variable for a block, and keep that separate to keep problems more manageable. When I'm reading code, I'm building a map in my head of how it does things. I'm not very effective at communicating such maps, so I have difficulty writing or speaking some of the time, but it's no barrier with programming.

godshatter 5y ago
I came here to say something similar. I also have aphantasia, and I generally keep a list of concepts this function (I'm a C guy) needs to do, what assumptions it needs to make, and where it fits in the general process. It needs to be general enough to be called in other contexts. It should verify that the input pointer is not null and it can safely ignore freeing that as a resource since it's done somewhere else. It needs to return one of these errors, and needs to add one of them to the error/description list since it's new with this function. It needs to handle the case where the passed-in error code pointer is NULL. Things like that. I've tried to visualize code with diagrams and whatnot, and it only gets in my way. I suspect that like some abstract math concepts visualization will always only get in the way except for an abstract very simplified picture of what's going on. But it's certainly possible that I'm missing some visualization skills most 4-year olds have and if I could visualize I would be able to handle it just fine.
wccrawford 5y ago
I don't have aphantasia, but I do have a harder time visualizing things than most people. I also don't even attempt to visual code. What would it even look like, other than code? Organizing it in my head just happens in the same way that remembering a list of steps to solve any problem does. There's no visual component. For that matter, there doesn't need to be an audio component, either.
- mmcdermott 5y ago
  The best analogies I can think of are Rube Goldberg Machines and plumbing. I visualize, but it's really hard to explain what I "see" to others.

godshatter 5y ago

I came here to say something similar. I also have aphantasia, and I generally keep a list of concepts this function (I'm a C guy) needs to do, what assumptions it needs to make, and where it fits in the general process. It needs to be general enough to be called in other contexts. It should verify that the input pointer is not null and it can safely ignore freeing that as a resource since it's done somewhere else. It needs to return one of these errors, and needs to add one of them to the error/description list since it's new with this function. It needs to handle the case where the passed-in error code pointer is NULL. Things like that. I've tried to visualize code with diagrams and whatnot, and it only gets in my way. I suspect that like some abstract math concepts visualization will always only get in the way except for an abstract very simplified picture of what's going on. But it's certainly possible that I'm missing some visualization skills most 4-year olds have and if I could visualize I would be able to handle it just fine.

wccrawford 5y ago

I don't have aphantasia, but I do have a harder time visualizing things than most people. I also don't even attempt to visual code. What would it even look like, other than code? Organizing it in my head just happens in the same way that remembering a list of steps to solve any problem does. There's no visual component. For that matter, there doesn't need to be an audio component, either.

mmcdermott 5y ago
The best analogies I can think of are Rube Goldberg Machines and plumbing. I visualize, but it's really hard to explain what I "see" to others.