[vidarh]

> one of the stumbling blocks for humans learning to speak computer is wanting or needing visual representations of things and building layers of abstraction in part to deal with that need.

I'm not blind, but fairly recently (couple of year; I'm 47) realised I have aphantasia. I didn't even know it was a thing or that others could see things in their minds eye - I thought people spoke metaphorically.

After learning that I realised that the way I "see" software structure as abstract relationships without a visualisation was very alien to a lot of people, who tend to rely on seeing the code.

Visual layout helps me build that abstract model rapidly, but once I have that model in my head I can mentally plan out code changes without looking much at the code, so I totally agree that needing visual representations can be a massive hindrance.