5 ms·
I personally have aphantasia, and, funny enough, I don't visualize anything when I'm coding, or reading code: I just understand the concept more or less deeply,
by n0n0n4t0r 2y ago
I personally have aphantasia, and, funny enough, I don't visualize anything when I'm coding, or reading code: I just understand the concept more or less deeply, but always without any images: It's just the "concept" that I understand. It's really like if I had an interpreter in my head when reading and when coding, I do the opposite: I know the required sequence and I reverse engineer it to the programming language version.
Do you guys really have schema in mind??
- swatcoder 2y agoMany of us work the way you do, more or less of the time, and I think the fair term to use for that is fluency. But I also think there are many working engineers, including some who have been in the trade for a very long time, that don't develop it. There are surely other roads to doing good work without fluency, just like there is when forced to work in a foregin language with only modest proficiency, but I can't help but suspect it's a much more exhausting experience.
- n0n0n4t0r 2y agoYes, I think you've totally coined it with the fluency concept.
- _ea1k 2y agoHonestly, I'm not sure that I do. It feels like I do, as the deeper that I get into a complex system, the more clearly I can see the whole and how all of the parts interact. But if I try to draw it? Usually I'll lose state and can't really picture it as well. I'd have to rebuild state as a graphic representation to do that. So... I don't really know how my mind is organizing it, tbh.
- dingnuts 2y agoI have kind of a crummy mind's eye, so my mind spontaneously produces vague "fantasy mechanisms" that seem to float in a void and interact with one another in some way that is analogous to the program, but there's no coherent metaphor and I don't think these visualizations actually hold any useful information or help in any way. So at least for me: no, definitely no schema in mind. If you're missing out on that, so am I! Affect is weird.
- tscherno 2y agoSame here...
- Lerc 2y agoI have aphantasia too an I do a lot of game jams where I more or less make something from start to finish in one go. One of the things I noticed is I approach a game from the point of view of how it is played, whereas most people approach games from the perspective of what it is about. I'll make a navigation game with a pirate theme as opposed to a game about pirates where you navigate. I also don't use engines and make something from scratch each time. These factors may go hand in hand, I build up from the mechanics instead of fashioning a scene into a game.
- hobs 2y agoIt's more like feelings that are not visual but much more tactile, itching, irritation, smoothness, grittiness, bad code like tasting dirty sand.
- n0n0n4t0r 2y agoThis seems like synesthesia, I've read that it may help excelling as you have several senses to use at the same time.
- hobs 2y agoI had to really consider it because while I am familiar with synesthesia I never really thought it would apply in my case, but when I got deeply into thinking about it the sensations are pretty much in the exact same case. I think its why I might get a little too irritable at silly code!
- n0n0n4t0r 2y agoI don't have synesthesia, this doesn't prevent me to be totally mad in front of bad code lol ¯ \ _ ( ツ ) _ / ¯
- JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B 2y agoI don’t have aphantasia but I visualize nothing when I code. Only words, verbs, and sentences (classes, variables, statements). I also visualize me smiting the previous programmer who wrote the awful code that I have to work on but that’s another story.
- tharkun__ 2y agoAnd then you run git blame to see who to smite and turns out you wrote the code two years ago ;)
- from-nibly 2y agoIt's always that idiot! Whish he wouldn't keep following me from job to job.
- JohnFen 2y agoI am reassured by noticing that idiot is following me. The way I figure it, the fact that past Me is a coding idiot means that present Me has improved as a programmer. I hope that continues indefinitely and that future Me will consider present Me an idiot as well.
- PullJosh 2y agoI have aphantasia and have long thought that my lack of a mind’s eye might be an asset for programming, much like how a blind person will typically have better-than-average hearing. If programming is best done through abstract thought and doesn’t benefit from pictures, then I’ve been training since the day I was born.