Conversation

Jun 28, 2021

Something interesting came up in the #PLTalk discussion with

last Friday. Neither of us think of programs as visual or visualize programs in our heads. The chat was really surprised! I'm curious how common this is among engineers. Do you visualize programs in your head?

Programs are visual
42.5%
Programs are not visual
57.5%

212 votesFinal results

eleanor

@zornsllama

Jun 28, 2021

hot take: programs *are* visual but I don't think of them that way (it takes a conscious effort for me to like, make a graph out of them, but when I do the structure is obvious)

Brendan Zabarauskas

@brendanzab

Jun 28, 2021

I can visualise the structure if I make an effort - the layered hypergraphs etc. - I just wish there were better tools that did helped me work with different, graphical projections of my code, and let me share that view with others. Stuff like Glamorous Toolkit, for example.

Brendan Zabarauskas

@brendanzab

Jun 28, 2021

I'd also say that I think traditional textual syntax is visual! It's just optimising for reading in a specific way, and has tradeoffs in what it emphasises and de-emphasises (and makes implicit).

Brendan Zabarauskas

@brendanzab

Jun 28, 2021

Hmm, I think this is a good point: twitter.com/mattsiegel/sta - I think _syntax_ can be visual. But maybe the idea is to transfer the semantic topology of programs into our brains or compilers, and to let us externalise it so that we don't need to hold it in all our heads at once.

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