3 ms·
Another datapoint of one. It's not really that I think in code. It's more like code is as much as a language to me as writing english, or holding the pencil to
by skydhash 1y ago
Another datapoint of one.
It's not really that I think in code. It's more like code is as much as a language to me as writing english, or holding the pencil to draw something. I got a change request, or I read something from the docs, and the the mental concept I have realign itself to the new knowledge. Getting code out is always effortless. There's no difference between
return the list of names of all the books that have the fantasy tag
And
return books.filter(b -> b.tags.contains('fantasy')).map(b -> b.name)
If I can describe something, I can code it.
- bluefirebrand 1y agoYes, this is exactly what I mean when I say "thinking in code". I feel it isn't accurate either, but it was the best way I had to describe it More or less just that there is little to no friction for me to think a thought and write the code compared to "translating" the thought into code
- Grimblewald 1y agoThis is it for me as well. It comes down to which is quicker to write. If I need an exact solution or implementation, then I just write it, because the code is significantly more efficient to describe the problem in than in plain english. An exception being visual things like plots, if we just care about a way to get to a plot, vague english is fine and likely less effort than writing code. i.e. function to calculate things, just write it; want to plot some data, vibe it. I can see immediatly if its not quite right and in a line can ask for the change i needed, zero cognitive effort required to fix issue, and hey presto, we have what we want. i think this stems from the fact natural language is generally quite inefficent for logical statements / arguments / instructions but can gather visual ideas far more efficiently than code can.