[n0n0n4t0r]

I personally have aphantasia, and, funny enough, I don't visualize anything when I'm coding, or reading code: I just understand the concept more or less deeply, but always without any images: It's just the "concept" that I understand. It's really like if I had an interpreter in my head when reading and when coding, I do the opposite: I know the required sequence and I reverse engineer it to the programming language version.

Do you guys really have schema in mind??

[JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B]

I don’t have aphantasia but I visualize nothing when I code. Only words, verbs, and sentences (classes, variables, statements).

I also visualize me smiting the previous programmer who wrote the awful code that I have to work on but that’s another story.

[tharkun__]

And then you run git blame to see who to smite and turns out you wrote the code two years ago ;)

[from-nibly]

It's always that idiot! Whish he wouldn't keep following me from job to job.

[JohnFen]

I am reassured by noticing that idiot is following me. The way I figure it, the fact that past Me is a coding idiot means that present Me has improved as a programmer. I hope that continues indefinitely and that future Me will consider present Me an idiot as well.

[dingnuts]

I have kind of a crummy mind's eye, so my mind spontaneously produces vague "fantasy mechanisms" that seem to float in a void and interact with one another in some way that is analogous to the program, but there's no coherent metaphor and I don't think these visualizations actually hold any useful information or help in any way.

So at least for me: no, definitely no schema in mind. If you're missing out on that, so am I! Affect is weird.

[tscherno]

Same here...

[PullJosh]

I have aphantasia and have long thought that my lack of a mind’s eye might be an asset for programming, much like how a blind person will typically have better-than-average hearing.

If programming is best done through abstract thought and doesn’t benefit from pictures, then I’ve been training since the day I was born.

[Lerc]

I have aphantasia too an I do a lot of game jams where I more or less make something from start to finish in one go.

One of the things I noticed is I approach a game from the point of view of how it is played, whereas most people approach games from the perspective of what it is about. I'll make a navigation game with a pirate theme as opposed to a game about pirates where you navigate.

I also don't use engines and make something from scratch each time. These factors may go hand in hand, I build up from the mechanics instead of fashioning a scene into a game.

[xyproto]

Which programming languages do you prefer when creating games?

[Lerc]

Recently, JavaScript, more due to the fact that everyone can play the things without having to install.

Previously pascal, Blitz basic, Delphi, Haxe, actionscript. some other things I forget.

[swatcoder]

Many of us work the way you do, more or less of the time, and I think the fair term to use for that is fluency.

But I also think there are many working engineers, including some who have been in the trade for a very long time, that don't develop it.

There are surely other roads to doing good work without fluency, just like there is when forced to work in a foregin language with only modest proficiency, but I can't help but suspect it's a much more exhausting experience.

[n0n0n4t0r]

Yes, I think you've totally coined it with the fluency concept.

[hobs]

It's more like feelings that are not visual but much more tactile, itching, irritation, smoothness, grittiness, bad code like tasting dirty sand.

[n0n0n4t0r]

This seems like synesthesia, I've read that it may help excelling as you have several senses to use at the same time.

[hobs]

I had to really consider it because while I am familiar with synesthesia I never really thought it would apply in my case, but when I got deeply into thinking about it the sensations are pretty much in the exact same case.

I think its why I might get a little too irritable at silly code!

[n0n0n4t0r]

I don't have synesthesia, this doesn't prevent me to be totally mad in front of bad code lol ¯ \ _ ( ツ ) _ / ¯

[_ea1k]

Honestly, I'm not sure that I do. It feels like I do, as the deeper that I get into a complex system, the more clearly I can see the whole and how all of the parts interact.

But if I try to draw it? Usually I'll lose state and can't really picture it as well. I'd have to rebuild state as a graphic representation to do that.

So... I don't really know how my mind is organizing it, tbh.