[lrossi]

Do you ever dream about programming?

I sometimes dream about code or debugging, especially when my team is working on a deadline. A few times I dreamt of solutions to problems we had. It felt good on the spot, calming and relaxing. Unfortunately, after waking up, they don’t make any sense.

[enricozb]

In the vaguest sense possible. Dreams for me feel very concrete but definitely aren't. If I was debugging something in a dream and became lucid, and attempted to read the "code" on the screen, it would be impossible. Just a swirl of letter-like things that made no sense whatsoever.

[timonoko]

I have solved various unsolvable issues in a dream.

And I actually remember one solution because I constructed a mental model so I would remember the unique groundbreaking solution I have just invented.

Thus I now remember a ball with curved arrows coming in and out, but I do not understand what it means and what problem it solves.

[eternalban]

You're in good company: https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/02/08/mendeleev-periodic-...

[sep_field]

the sun with its magnetic force lines?

[timonoko]

More abstract than that and at software level. For example "hyper-meta-recursion" of functions or DNA-strings. Or neural net as a ball, where wayward thoughts lose their momentum. Or maybe dynamics of self-reflection and consciousness of such a ball... Also anti-gravity is one of problems I have definitively solved, but do not remember the solution right now.

[drusepth]

I actively try to fall asleep every night working through a problem or designing some intricate/problematic code in my head. I'm not sure if it's that cognitive work right before falling asleep or the dreams (where I'm usually working through and/or coding that problem a few different ways, often for what feels like hours in my sleep), but I almost always wake up with enough of an idea to get started and/or some revelation that'll help in some way with the high level design.

[themodelplumber]

(Note: I consider interests, waking dreams (ideas, meditations, & imaginations), and dreams to be on a sort of subjective-metaphorical continuum.)

Anyway whenever I "dream" about programming it's almost always a scheduling cue. The exact type of programming, technique, language, etc. will provide details as to the type of scheduling that needs to be done.

For example, an interest in lisp seems to point to high-level, conceptual plan-making/life-design which leads toward a schedule. BASIC interest seems to point toward making a simple schedule / zeit-plan and working up from there. Getting with the program, metaphorically.

I mention this in part because you brought up the deadline...and that is related to schedules and timing.

If I dream about debugging, there's almost certainly a timing issue in my schedule, something unrealistic or problematic.

Just my subjective experience...

[tgbugs]

When intensely focused on solving a problem, or following a day of uninterrupted implementation, I have had programming dreams that go on all night. The dream is nothing but the text of the code (usually highlighted with my custom theme) in a buffer that takes up the whole of my visual field in the dream. I have never been able to make out any particular details of the code, and it is not clear to me whether such dreams are at all productive since they don't get at the abstract level of the problem.

[joshspankit]

I feel like there might be a link between the different awareness during exhaustion, and dreams.

Like, if you’re on deadline and pushing through with a few hours of sleep a night, both panicked and not quite sure how you’re getting done what you’re getting done, then you might have foggier dreams, or feel that background panic while in the dream environment.