There is an excellent video by Feynman on a related note: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cj4y0EUlU-Y
A damn good way to spend six minutes IMO... Cheers, Jarosław Rzeszótko 2012/5/9 BGB <cr88...@gmail.com> > On 5/8/2012 2:56 PM, Julian Leviston wrote: > > Isn't this simply a description of your "thought clearing process"? > > You think in English... not Ruby. > > I'd actually hazard a guess and say that really, you think in a > semi-verbal semi-phyiscal pattern language, and not very well formed one, > either. This is the case for most people. This is why you have to write > hard problems down... you have to bake them into physical form so you can > process them again and again, slowly developing what you mean into a shape. > > > in my case I think my thinking process is a good deal different. > > a lot more of my thinking tends to be a mix of visual/spatial thinking, > and thinking in terms of glyphs and text (often source-code, and often > involving glyphs and traces which I suspect are unique to my own thoughts, > but are typically laid out in the same "character cell grid" as all of the > text). > > I guess it could be sort of like if text were rammed together with glyphs > and PCB traces or similar, with the lines weaving between the characters, > and sometimes into and out of the various glyphs (many of which often > resemble square boxes containing circles and dots, sometimes with points or > corners, and sometimes letters or numbers, ...). > > things may vary somewhat, depending on what I am thinking about the time. > > > my memory is often more like collections of images, or almost like "pages > in a book", with lots of information drawn onto them, usually in a > white-on-black color-scheme. there is typically very little color or > movement. > > sometimes it may include other forms of graphics, like pictures of things > I have seen, objects I can imagine, ... > > > thoughts may often use natural-language as well, in a spoken-like form, > but usually this is limited either to when talking to people or when > writing something (if I am trying to think up what I am writing, I may > often hear "echoes" of various ways the thought could be expressed, and of > text as it is being written, ...). reading often seems to bypass this (and > go more directly into a visual form). > > > typically, thinking about programming problems seems to be more like being > in a "storm" of text flying all over the place, and then bits of code > flying together from the pieces. > > if any math is involved, often any relevant structures will be themselves > depicted visually, often in geometry-like forms. > > or, at least, this is what it "looks like", I really don't actually know > how it all works, or how the thoughts themselves actually work or do what > they do. > > I think all this counts as some form of "visual thinking" (though I > suspect probably a non-standard form based on some stuff I have read, given > that "colors, movement, and emotions" don't really seem to be a big part of > this). > > > or such... > > > On 09/05/2012, at 2:20 AM, Jarek Rzeszótko wrote: > > Example: I have been programming in Ruby for 7 years now, for 5 years > professionally, and yet when I face a really difficult problem the best way > still turns out to be to write out a basic outline of the overall algorithm > in pseudo-code. It might be a personal thing, but for me there are just too > many irrelevant details to keep in mind when trying to solve a complex > problem using a programming language right from the start. I cannot think > of classes, method names, arguments etc. until I get a basic idea of how > the given computation should work like on a very high level (and with the > low-level details staying "fuzzy"). I know there are people who feel the > same way, there was an interesting essay from Paul Graham followed by a > very interesting comment on MetaFilter about this: > > > > > _______________________________________________ > fonc mailing listfonc@vpri.orghttp://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc > > > > _______________________________________________ > fonc mailing list > fonc@vpri.org > http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc > >
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