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What do you visualize while programming?

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Re: What do you visualize while programming?

#121

Post by ljdtt »

malux85 wrote: post #29
ljdtt wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That really resonates with me! I’ve found that when I’m up against a tricky problem, the solution often pops into my head when I’m not actively thinking about it—whether I’m sleeping, going for a walk, or just doing something completely different. It’s like the answer appears out of nowhere after I’ve stepped away. I’ve always wondered why this happens. Is it just how our brains work in problem-solving mode? Does any…

Yeah this is me too - which is why I enjoy turn based games while I’m coding, if I get stuck I distract my consciousness with 2-3 turns in Civilisation and the answer pops into my head while I’m playing. Turn based is excellent because always I’m mid-turn when the answer comes so I alt-tab out and keep going. My steam shows some ridiculous number of hours in game because it’s always on, nearly 24/7, in a window on my…

Very interesting. Any turn-based games you'd recommend for someone who's completely new to them? I have zero knowledge in that area but would love to try it out.

Re: What do you visualize while programming?

#122

Post by seanw444 »

swatcoder wrote: post #43

I think the title by itself suggests a different question than the article raises. The idea of the article is that certain visualizations can help think through certain problems. Maybe you can hold these visualizations in your head, or maybe you can't (because your aphantasic, they're too complex, you're tired, whatever), but they're just as available to you on paper or in diagramming tools if you need them. It's try…

Agreed. It's not like every problem requires you to imagine a mental model to represent and understand it. Some things are just intuited, especially as you get more proficient.

Re: What do you visualize while programming?

#123

Post by KentBeck »

I tend to visualize call trees. Much of my refactoring is manipulating the call tree--flattening it, re-extracting subroutines, moving expressions up & down.

Another non-symbolic style of thinking I use is kinesthetic synesthesia. I "feel" the design "lean" in one direction or another, then refactor in that direction.

Re: What do you visualize while programming?

#124

Post by koreth1 »

I don't have aphantasia (I can picture people and things if I want to) but unless I'm building a user interface, my thinking is completely non-visual when I'm programming or thinking about systems or data.

When someone asks me to draw an architecture diagram or a diagram of our production infrastructure or whatever, I am very slow at it and the result is usually middling at best, because my mental model of those things has no geometric or spatial component at all.

To the article's point, I've can't recall ever finding a visualization of my actual code or architecture that helped me work through a problem. When I've tried, it has always just slowed me down because I constantly have to map back and forth between the picture and the native non-geometric version in my head.

That's not to say I never use any kind of visualization. Graphical representations of things like profiling results are convenient and useful to me. But they tend to be more like representations of numeric data than representations of systems or code.

Re: What do you visualize while programming?

#126

Post by seanw444 »

butlike wrote: post #97
sitkack wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should buy a really nice tent now while you have cash flow.

Why spend the capital on a tent. A survival manual is magnitudes cheaper and accomplishes the same thing, ultimately. /s

The amount of things you can accomplish with a tarp or two, and knowledge of some knots, is great. Absolutely underrated method of camping if you're not in a place where you'll get eaten alive by bugs.

Re: What do you visualize while programming?

#127

Post by supportengineer »

I will draw or doodle on a notepad next to the computer. Then I will refer to it as I'm coding. I'm very visual, I need to SEE the diagram to model it, but even more so to communicate any ideas with others. I much prefer to DRAW an explanation than to use words. I get tripped up with names of things. If I create any non-trivial Java class name, I forget it immediately. In my head they are represented in a way I can't describe. There is no name or picture. It simply is and it related to other things which are.

Re: What do you visualize while programming?

#128

Post by omani »

romanhn wrote: post #113
omani wrote: post #76

what is this new trend lately of having aphantasia? never read/heard this before from the HN audience. bots are increasing on HN it seems.

What is this new trend of describing recurring phenomena that one does not understand as bots? The term aphantasia was coined in 2015, so yes, it is new. We aphantasiacs only heard this described relatively recently, and my mind was blown that apparently people can actually visualize things. A whole lot of things that we assumed were mostly wordplay or concepts ("imagine you're sitting on the beach") turned out to ha…

> and my mind was blown that apparently people can actually visualize things

my mind is blown that there are people actually realizing that they are not able to visualize.

> Edit: looks like half of your comments are about HN being overrun by bots, so I guess I'm unlikely to change any minds here.

no, quite the opposite. you are confirming my thinking. you can see my previous statement in both ways:

- (computer) bots written in a language

- human "bots" experiencing themselves as humans

> it's that there's new understanding about the range of human experience.

exactly.

you'd be shocked to see what else is out there you didn't know about.

Re: What do you visualize while programming?

#130

Post by xyproto »

Lerc wrote: post #105
n0n0n4t0r wrote: post #71

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 v…

I 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 m…

Which programming languages do you prefer when creating games?
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