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What do you visualize while programming?

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Re: What do you visualize while programming?

#161

Post by kaba0 »

nitwit005 wrote: post #132
koreth1 wrote: post #124

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 thin…

I've tried testing to see if people grasp architectural diagrams, and they basically do not succeed at it past a trivial case. You're likely just more honest.

I do like sketching those up, but in an ultra-simplistic way (literally just a word/label and some arrows). Paper sort of extends my working memory, so I use it as a temporary storage to think through something that’s getting too big to hold in my mind. But it is so vague that coming back to it later, or someone else taking a look might not benefit anything.

Re: What do you visualize while programming?

#162

Post by JohnFen »

Izkata wrote: post #58
JohnFen wrote: post #3

If I'm "in the zone", then I stop being aware of the monitor and keyboard and all I see is what's in my mind's eye: geometric shapes coming in and out of existence and moving in various ways that relate to what I'm doing. Then it feels like the code is just pouring forth on its own without me paying attention to it. It's seriously an altered state. Most of the time I'm not in that state[1], though. In those cases, I…

I don't even have to get in the zone for that, spatial relationships with various shapes (they're usually tagged blobs rather than geometric shapes; it's not something that could easily be made into an image to share with people) are just how I think about code in general. I switch from my normal "internal voice" style of thought to something different that usually doesn't use words, except occasionally for things li…

Wow. I never really thought of it before, but yes -- getting absorbed into a book is a very, very similar experience.

Re: What do you visualize while programming?

#163

Post by JohnFen »

from-nibly wrote: post #142
tharkun__ wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And then you run git blame to see who to smite and turns out you wrote the code two years ago ;)

It's always that idiot! Whish he wouldn't keep following me from job to job.

I 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.

Re: What do you visualize while programming?

#165

Post by wduquette »

koreth1 wrote: post #124

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 thin…

Same. When I’m actively coding I have a sense of relationships and how things fit together, and I often discover problems by a sense that things aren’t fitting together the way I expected. Then I have to look closer.

When I think out a problem I tend to do so in words rather than diagrams, on paper, or in Obsidian (or the FreeMind mind-mapper, which is really just a graphical outliner) until I have the whole thing in my head and all the relations are clear in my head. I don’t mean that I picture them, but everything fits together and I know it. By then I can write down and implement the solution.

It’s a very non-visual process, and I can’t really explain just what’s going on in my head. I think of it as loading the problem into my back-brain, which then condescends to let me know certain things about it. The actual structures, if you can call them that, are mostly hidden from my conscious mind.

But it works. I’ve been at this for four decades, and I’ve a reputation for writing reliable code. But it’s deeply weird, even to me.

Re: What do you visualize while programming?

#167

Post by sevensor »

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…

I do not have aphantasia. Too much phantasia if anything. But I don’t visualize shapes and colors when programming. In fact I find block and arrow diagrams confusing. I visualize the code itself, but zoomed out. It takes on the feel of a house I’ve spent a lot of time in. I know my way around, I know where I left my hat (a function) when I walked in (when I wrote it), which drains clog easily (hairy IO code), which furniture needs dusting (code I haven’t looked at in a while). But to be clear, this is a non-visual metaphor. The visual is the code.

Re: What do you visualize while programming?

#168

Post by artyom »

koreth1 wrote: post #124

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 thin…

Very much the same. Visual representations are just a translation of whatever happens within the brain to be able to articulate it somehow to other people.

I think that's the beauty of it, though. It's never really there, even the code itself is a translation.

Re: What do you visualize while programming?

#170

Post by marginalia_nu »

koreth1 wrote: post #124

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 thin…

Yeah I'm the same. I think of program code more like like an idea expressed in a language, not like a space. So in the same way I don't visualize anything in particular when I have a conversation, I don't when I program either.
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