[usgroup]

If you’re saying you write code without knowing what you’re writing then yes you should have a mental model.

It’s a lot easier to build in your head than to write code. You might go through a dozen ways of doing something in your mind which would take an age to do in code.

Further, writing code to produce a mental model is limiting because every line you write naively commits you to fewer possibilities. You can be a lot more revolutionary in your head at no added cost and without throwing away hours of work.