Programming in the Brain

re: Programming in the Brain

Page — Thu, 20 May 2004 18:51:00 GMT

That's deep.

re: Programming in the Brain

Jerry Dennany — Thu, 20 May 2004 19:23:00 GMT

neat, thanks.

re: Programming in the Brain

Richard Acton — Thu, 20 May 2004 20:25:00 GMT

you've just described the weeks that follow after taking on support of another application. You write it up much better than I ever could of course.

Another great read. Cheers Matt.

re: Programming in the Brain

Anonieko Ramos — Thu, 20 May 2004 21:23:00 GMT

At last, a great prose to break the monotony of blog style of writing at this site.

re: Programming in the Brain

Frank — Thu, 20 May 2004 22:39:00 GMT

Time for Reflector?

re: Programming in the Brain

Avner Kashtan — Fri, 21 May 2004 11:56:00 GMT

I know what you mean. After a while, chunk of code ceases to be a stream of characters on the screen, becomes more of a stream of consciousness - I want to go change a declaration, my mind doesn't go "PgUp to the beginning, find the declaration and change the last word to X" - my mind goes "Change the declaration", and my hands do the work themselves. I don't even have to be looking at the code for that, sometimes. The code is but a persistant dump of the structure in your mind.

Sometimes the problem is trying to translate that little, simple nudge in your mind into actual code that works. Sometimes the code is so big you can only hold part of the structure, paging the rest out. Sometimes you have so many versions of the code, half of which are present and commented out, so that you yourself don't know what you're seeing.

But the important thing is not to think of it as lines of code, but as a construct in your mind. Make the changes in your mind, serialize them into code.

re: Programming in the Brain

Tim Scarfe — Fri, 21 May 2004 12:44:00 GMT

That was beautiful.

No amount of documentation will let a non-artist truly appreciate the intricateness of an solution such as a software application. I discovered recently, that I am a bit of an artist, but not in any way I would have known of some years ago.

You're an artist too Matt. I appreciate that.

re: Programming in the Brain

Stefan Turalski — Fri, 21 May 2004 13:08:00 GMT

Hi,

In what time-space you are living ? I want to get there, really. To say, write or even thinking about what I'm doing right now, I have to go to toilet or for a long meeting...
Nice thought anyway, thanks for this ...

re: Programming in the Brain

DarthPedro — Fri, 21 May 2004 23:00:00 GMT

I know exactly what you mean. After enough familiarity, it's as if you become one with the code. Kind of eery...

Living the life

Mike's Digital Laboratory — Sat, 22 May 2004 06:11:00 GMT

We need more stories like this one. The truth is programming is an abstract 3 dimensional art. And so much...

re: Programming in the Brain

theb0x — Tue, 25 May 2004 22:48:00 GMT

programming isn't an art you monkeys. it's a discipline. people who treat programming as an art are the ones looking for jobs. no employer wants to hire an artist to write software.

re: Programming in the Brain

Matt — Wed, 26 May 2004 02:09:00 GMT

If you fail to see programming as an art, you fail to see programming.

re: Programming in the Brain

Meri — Tue, 08 Jun 2004 09:28:00 GMT

theb0x:

Depends what level of money you're talking about. People who see programming as an art usually make much much better designers. And yes, they are more likely to get hired for designing than for just being a code monkey ... but hell, it's probably what they're best at and they'll get paid more.

That kind of approach helps immensely when you're trying to get onboard with new projects, just as much as if you're adapting someone else's source code. Beautifully said, Matt.

re: Chicken and the Egg... (aka. Read vs. Writing code)

JeremyK's [MSFT] WebLog — Tue, 15 Jun 2004 00:33:00 GMT

re: Programming in the Brain

Anna — Tue, 06 Jul 2004 15:12:00 GMT

I'm failing miserably to grasp programming, so I typed in to the internet 'programming and the brain" to see if that would help. I was looking for brain scans to show what part of the brain did it but your prose Matt was much more instructive and I am pleased to hear that a person that is creative and soulful can not only understand programming but understand on a profound level. I probably still wont be able to do it but at least I have a new technique to try

Thanks Matt

Anna

See Braidy Tester Read Code. Read, Braidy Tester, Read!

The Braidy Tester — Wed, 14 Jul 2004 18:45:00 GMT

See Braidy Tester Read Code. Read, Braidy Tester, Read!

The Braidy Tester — Wed, 14 Jul 2004 18:46:00 GMT