Comment by oomkiller
16 years ago
I'm not sure if I'm unique in this regard, but I seem to have the ability to fully visualize complex systems and problems. The key for me is understanding the problem fully, as I have to pull all of the pieces together. I find it difficult sometimes because other people aren't used to working this way, so they try to feed you bite-sized pieces, where what I really want is the entire problem.
You're not, but as you say this approach imposes its own difficulties. A piecemeal approach often, though not necessarily, gets faster results.
Could you put some lower bound on what you consider 'complex' ?
It seems a bit of an outlandish claim to make without a reference point, what's complex to you may be simple to others and vice versa. So a bit of extra data as to the kind of complex systems and problems you visualize would help.
Sorry if it seems outlandish, I'm not really sure how quantify "complex". One personal example though is I designed a national emergency management network (Utilizing XMPP/PubSub, AMQP, Rails, etc) in my head without writing anything down. That may seem special or it may not, I just find it rare, at least in my (diminutive) peer group. I've also designed all of these huge dreamy systems growing up, I have pictures and diagrams I drew in 5th grade :) They sure are funny to look back at!