Comment by yencabulator
15 days ago
I think you're the kind of person who has an internal voice talking in their head, and can't imagine any other kind of thought?
Math is all about abstract shapes and properties, for me. So is much of programming.
Yeah, just chiming in to say the same. Essentially all of my thinking is geometric in nature. The only time I have any internal monologue is as a mnemonic device to remember a sequence.
Yeah, I suppose you're right and I'd love to understand more. Do you imagine a modality of programming a computer in an abstract (pictorial? diagrammatic?) way that fully bypasses the current need to form statements?
Let's try this as an example.
So I have in my head a thing that has the name "x" and a spatial connection to that area of the source code where foo is called.
x is a Result<u32, MyError> and in my head that's a vague abstract shape with the "potential" to be either the uint32 shape (in my mind, a "brick" of a certain size) or a MyError shape (vague blob and since I know it's an enum it also has its own "potential" to be multiple shapes; it kind of has the branchiness of a tree without being tree-shaped; this is all abstract and concepts, not concrete shapes).
When "x" meets the "match" the "x" shape splits into its "potential" shapes, and "num" has the uint32 brick shape.
None of this has anything to do with visual programming like Scratch. It's just that I never say in my head words like "x has value of what foo returns" or "num is an uint32"; those just are.
Does that make any sense to you?
Hmm... that's interesting. It sort of gives me a glimpse, but I'm still very confused about what the "process" of programming is for you. You mention in your explanation that these things in your head are somewhat "vague" and "abstract" - so how do you see the action of converting a general idea in your head into working code in the computer?
Just to recap, the way I see this is that the non-verbal neural processes are insufficient to fully define a computer program and it is only at the point where a person converts their abstract thoughts into verbal statements/expressions that the program is fully generated.
So is it that you have some process whereby you feel that you can generate a specific program in your head (e.g. with those shapes you mentioned) that exits in fullness without any equivalent of statements? And if so, can you foresee a future human-computer interface that would allow you to program directly via those shapes without having to type statements?
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