it seems like most people can get pretty good at discrete or fuzzy (for lack of a better word) types of reasoning, but rarely both. I'm not sure if it's just avoidant behavior, relying on whichever mode developed faster to the exclusion of the other, or something more innate.

given enough time to read and debug, I suspect I could eventually figure out how any piece of code worked. but if you give me a book and ask me to pick a good topic for an essay, I might not finish before the end of time.