would rather just do a fmri than a leetcode interview....
To the brain, reading computer code is not the same as reading language (2020)
81–90 of 212 posts
Re: To the brain, reading computer code is not the same as reading language (2020)
#82I run a YouTube channel that's mostly devoted to reading code: https://www.youtube.com/@ants_are_everywhere I (try to) read code from popular open source projects. It's a bit like sight reading in music because the idea is that I go in blind and try to make sense of it. This rings true to me: > The researchers saw little to no response to code in the language regions of the brain. Instead, they found that the coding…
>>This network, whose activity is spread throughout the frontal and parietal lobes of the brain, A (rare enough) person in chronic coma, regaining consciousness on a sedative-hypnotic drug zolpidem, which lasts for a couple of hours as long as the drug is active, can also show parietal lobes (and a bit of dorsal frontal lobes) activation (as showcased probably in Hamilton's Pharmacopoeia in a series on zolpidem). Thu…
This is pretty fascinating, thanks!
Re: To the brain, reading computer code is not the same as reading language (2020)
#83People have always told me the best programmers/computer scientists are also great mathematicians and this seems to support that. Esp thinking about Turing, Von Neumann and Knuth
Academic/theorical computer scientists, totally. But pragmatic programmers / software engineers, try reading the average PhD's python code. Usually it is a mess. Knuth may be an exception, rather than the rule.
Average PhDs are by definition not the best though?
Re: To the brain, reading computer code is not the same as reading language (2020)
#84Better replace the submission with the linked article at the end: https://news.mit.edu/2020/brain-reading-computer-code-1215
Thanks—we changed the URL above from https://learnhub.top/understanding-how-the-brain-reads-code-....
Submitters: "Please submit the original source. If a post reports on something found on another site, submit the latter." - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Re: To the brain, reading computer code is not the same as reading language (2020)
#85Re: To the brain, reading computer code is not the same as reading language (2020)
#86Programming is more spatial than linguistic. It requires temporal understanding in order to formulate, and usually data 'structures' are based around physically laying data out.
Re: To the brain, reading computer code is not the same as reading language (2020)
#87A really interesting finding considering how many comparisons of code to literature exist. I.e. the advice of laying your files out like a “newspaper”, writing your code in logical evolutions like an essay, etc…
I've never heard that advice about newspapers? Maybe you're thinking of literate programming.
Anyway I don't think it's a remotely interesting finding. Anyone that has done any programming knows that it is not like natural language. We even explicitly know that from the complete failure of languages that try to be programming languages and natural languages like AppleTalk.
The fact that you use English words in your identifiers and comments in your code doesn't make it English any more than writing a paper about maths and using `m` for mass means maths is linguistic.
Re: To the brain, reading computer code is not the same as reading language (2020)
#88I am wondering if the domain model is not influencing the results.
If the code is describing a math function then it seems to me reading it will activate the same parts as math.
What if they will read a business logic that is about say users creating accounts?
Re: To the brain, reading computer code is not the same as reading language (2020)
#89You can tell because code has no narrator voice in your head when you read it.
I have a narrator voice when reading code. It's the same narrator voice as when reading technical reports and white papers. I do sometimes struggle to process code that doesn't read well, likely because the cadence of the narrator voice gets disturbed and doesn't flow well. I've found that my descriptions and explanations of how things work generally follow the same cadence as this narrator voice, which tends to help…
Mine consists primarily of swear words.
Re: To the brain, reading computer code is not the same as reading language (2020)
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
I find removing the organizing and communication layers greater increases your velocity. For each idea we need to communicate to others or ourselves (in a linear language) involves a translating process. Removing the need for that layer leaves you in the coding zone. Once you have to leave for translating it becomes an expensive process for your brain to recreate the verbal / non verbal environments (or takes too muc…
I'm working in a library that was written by someone who no longer works at the company who thought this way. It's an absolute nightmare to understand. He may have been in the "coding zone," but he chose variable names that make no sense, abstractions that don't map on to any actual entities, and left no coherent documentation. I think the organization and communication layers are absolutely critical, and any apparen…
I think communication layers are critical as well. On a team they are more important than the coding and that's why you hire someone to lead and organize everything.
Removing the large team removes those layers and it's why a two person team can do the work of 12.
Adding in documentation, training materials and providing support can happen at the end of the development cycle freeing you to support the project 100%.
It's not that you remove communication or documentation but do it at select intervals. Don't do a full scan of a table everytime you need a value found in the index.