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What do you visualize while programming?

dillonshook.com

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Re: What do you visualize while programming?

#3

Post by JohnFen »

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 don't think I really visualize anything. I think my mind is too occupied with egg-juggling to have the cycles to spare on visualizing things.

[1] The older I get, the more difficult the state is to achieve and the more delicate it is when I've achieved it. Which is a shame because my best work is done in that state.

Re: What do you visualize while programming?

#4

Post by jareklupinski »

i visualize a little version of a former manager sitting in my head

he asks me questions about the code i'm looking at, and my brain does its best to explain the logic to 'him' in plain english

any time i'm unable to answer something he 'asked', that's exactly where the bug is

Re: What do you visualize while programming?

#9

Post by bfung »

Layers of directed graphs where:

* Nodes can represent code units (lines, functions, AST) or some low level thing, even hardware parts.

* Can expand a node which contains other graphs

* Can group graphs into simpler graphs to describe a high level system design

* edges generally mean communications between graphs/nodes

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