Re:To the brain, reading computer code is not the same as re...
by noneeeed on Wednesday December 16, 2020 @05:49AM
(#25441116)
As a total monoglot who regrets not learning languages properly when he was a kid, this still seems pretty obvious to me that at least I don't read code in the way I read natural language, or maths.
However it's always good to have intuitions like this confirmed or refuted by actual investigation, and putting them on a more solid footing within the broader context.
My personal experience of reading code has always felt more like looking at a mechanical mechanism, or perhaps solving a paper maze where you see the whole thing at once but can focus on parts as well. It isn't something I look at one line at a time, I read it in structural blocks, almost a breadth-first reading. I see the if/else statement and structure before I see any of the details of each branch. It's a deeply non-linear process of going up and down levels of abstraction where necessary, and ignoring details at lower levels that are irrelevant to the task at hand.
However it's always good to have intuitions like this confirmed or refuted by actual investigation, and putting them on a more solid footing within the broader context.
My personal experience of reading code has always felt more like looking at a mechanical mechanism, or perhaps solving a paper maze where you see the whole thing at once but can focus on parts as well. It isn't something I look at one line at a time, I read it in structural blocks, almost a breadth-first reading. I see the if/else statement and structure before I see any of the details of each branch. It's a deeply non-linear process of going up and down levels of abstraction where necessary, and ignoring details at lower levels that are irrelevant to the task at hand.