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I have a significantly above average memory (read a book remember what was in it, not exactly but close), and I was told that Dermatology was the field I should

I have a significantly above average memory (read a book remember what was in it, not exactly but close), and I was told that Dermatology was the field I should pursue. Apparently it involves thousands of similar but slightly different diseases that, if you could remember them all perfectly, would make your life as a dermatologist an absolute cakewalk. I'm a programmer instead. School sucks when people don't understand why you don't need to study, and try to make you do it anyway. I remember essentially every line of code I've ever worked on, though, which can be an asset or a challenge depending - JScript version five is still knocking around in my brain somewhere, confusing my usage of modern Javascript.

actionfromafar 3y ago
I think a boss I had a long time ago was like that. An anecdote: he originally wrote the code years back. Then, a particularly hairy debug session involving potentially many millions of dollars in damages if the problem was not found, recompiled, fixed and deployed on embedded hardware in the field - a tense situation. The programmers doubling as field techs called in to this boss (original author of the code) who hadn't touched the code in years. Yet, after som prodding questions directed them to find a certain source file, an "if" at around line so-or-so in a 10k line (spaghetti, in my opinion) source file, make a single change, recompile and test. Of course, it worked. That anecdote changed my understanding of his code. To me, it was badly written, unstructured and so on. (And it was.) But what use is structure and order if you can keep all of it in your head at the same time? I lose track after a weekend, I need the order.
- jaggederest 3y ago
  Absolutely, it took me a long time to learn exactly that. Even though I remember what's in the file and where things go and can build the structure in my head, that's not without a cost, a significant one. Having a bad day, can't engage your "superpowers"? Whoops, now your entire project is in park until you get a chance to focus. And of course, as soon as the project hits someone else's desk, I can't rely on them knowing the whole codebase implicitly either. One way I've used my ability in the past is that, for example, I can just read libraries or documentation and remember them, possibly better than the author does. I've done that for several major and minor versions of Rails, all historical now, but it gave me a significant edge at the time. On the other hand, as I mentioned, that also means there's a disturbing amount of obsolete information muddying the waters - another commenter here mentioned that he has a hard time distinguishing between his recollections of his own voice vs other people's, in his memories, and that is much how it operates for me - Was that documentation valid for Postgres 7.6, 9.6 or 14.6?
- prerok 3y ago
  I had a coworker like that once. The trouble is that no-one but him could maintain it. So, after he already left for another project (within the same company), the managers called him back in to continue adding features to it. In my view, it would have been better to just spend time to refactor, until anybody in the team would be able to understand it. That episode reinforced the belief in me that KISS is the best approach in writing code. I try not to write "smart" code but simple, easy to understand, so I can go on vacation or change projects without being constantly dragged into the same codebase.
harha_ 3y ago
I do remember the code I've worked on over the past 7 years I've been a professional programmer, but I don't have total recall or anything even close to it. Now that I think of it, it's strange how well I can recall those lines of code from various programming languages I've used on various projects.
- jamestimmins 3y ago
  Yeah that's very uncommon. I barely remember the code I wrote two days ago.
eloisant 3y ago
I've worked with some programmers who have an excellent memory and it's not always a good thing. The problem is with these programmers is that they can very easily work with big, complex spaghetti code bases, so they will rarely take the time to organize their code base in a modular way. Because they can easily fit the whole project in their memory, they don't see the value in make a project modular so you only have to think about a small part of it.

actionfromafar 3y ago

I think a boss I had a long time ago was like that. An anecdote: he originally wrote the code years back. Then, a particularly hairy debug session involving potentially many millions of dollars in damages if the problem was not found, recompiled, fixed and deployed on embedded hardware in the field - a tense situation. The programmers doubling as field techs called in to this boss (original author of the code) who hadn't touched the code in years. Yet, after som prodding questions directed them to find a certain source file, an "if" at around line so-or-so in a 10k line (spaghetti, in my opinion) source file, make a single change, recompile and test. Of course, it worked. That anecdote changed my understanding of his code. To me, it was badly written, unstructured and so on. (And it was.) But what use is structure and order if you can keep all of it in your head at the same time? I lose track after a weekend, I need the order.

jaggederest 3y ago
Absolutely, it took me a long time to learn exactly that. Even though I remember what's in the file and where things go and can build the structure in my head, that's not without a cost, a significant one. Having a bad day, can't engage your "superpowers"? Whoops, now your entire project is in park until you get a chance to focus. And of course, as soon as the project hits someone else's desk, I can't rely on them knowing the whole codebase implicitly either. One way I've used my ability in the past is that, for example, I can just read libraries or documentation and remember them, possibly better than the author does. I've done that for several major and minor versions of Rails, all historical now, but it gave me a significant edge at the time. On the other hand, as I mentioned, that also means there's a disturbing amount of obsolete information muddying the waters - another commenter here mentioned that he has a hard time distinguishing between his recollections of his own voice vs other people's, in his memories, and that is much how it operates for me - Was that documentation valid for Postgres 7.6, 9.6 or 14.6?
prerok 3y ago
I had a coworker like that once. The trouble is that no-one but him could maintain it. So, after he already left for another project (within the same company), the managers called him back in to continue adding features to it. In my view, it would have been better to just spend time to refactor, until anybody in the team would be able to understand it. That episode reinforced the belief in me that KISS is the best approach in writing code. I try not to write "smart" code but simple, easy to understand, so I can go on vacation or change projects without being constantly dragged into the same codebase.

harha_ 3y ago

I do remember the code I've worked on over the past 7 years I've been a professional programmer, but I don't have total recall or anything even close to it. Now that I think of it, it's strange how well I can recall those lines of code from various programming languages I've used on various projects.

jamestimmins 3y ago
Yeah that's very uncommon. I barely remember the code I wrote two days ago.

eloisant 3y ago

I've worked with some programmers who have an excellent memory and it's not always a good thing. The problem is with these programmers is that they can very easily work with big, complex spaghetti code bases, so they will rarely take the time to organize their code base in a modular way. Because they can easily fit the whole project in their memory, they don't see the value in make a project modular so you only have to think about a small part of it.