Here's a flash of inspiration I had, produced by this thread, recent figure drawing practice, plus an iced latte: in the same way that there are identical lines

Here's a flash of inspiration I had, produced by this thread, recent figure drawing practice, plus an iced latte: in the same way that there are identical lines one can draw that have different purposes to produce an image, there are identical characters one can type that have different purposes to produce a program. That is, if you're observing from life, you might have some lines to broadly structure the image first: some angles and lengths, a grid, or an envelope shape. Then to develop connectedness and flow you might switch to drawing in sweeping gestures. Then you might switch again to 3D construction to refine the forms and make them align well, and finish by adding shading lines to render the lighting and details. Gestural lines are powerful because they generate lots of proportional information: a straight line tells us a single angle and length, while a sweeping curve can be nearly infinite. Right now when we type code, it's a little more like poking at the drawing, making little scribble lines everywhere. We don't have gestural lines, and the structural tools are also limited - we often have to erase and redo things because the "proportions" are off. While I don't know if the literal translation of this to "programming with a stylus" would work out, it's definitely on my mind now.