Pretty good Paul Graham coding essay: Holding a Program in One's Head. Nothing earth shattering, but it seems right to me.A good programmer working intensively on his own code can hold it in his mind the way a mathematician holds a problem he's working on. Mathematicians don't answer questions by working them out on paper the way schoolchildren are taught to. They do more in their heads: they try to understand a problem space well enough that they can walk around it the way you can walk around the memory of the house you grew up in. At its best programming is the same. You hold the whole program in your head, and you can manipulate it at will.
Back in the day when I did hands-on HW design, that's how I approached a board. Two hundred chips. Four thousand wires. In my head. Takes a pretty intense period of focus.
Just yesterday I "designed" two products with PowerPoint. I'm willing to stipulate that the details will work. (Although other people will have to spend months making it a reality.)
For me its more like swimming in it.
(though Mark, I have taken great pleasure in spinning around on a swiveling chair and telling other people what codes to write.)
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- jim 8-24-2007 4:59 pm
Back in the day when I did hands-on HW design, that's how I approached a board. Two hundred chips. Four thousand wires. In my head. Takes a pretty intense period of focus.
Just yesterday I "designed" two products with PowerPoint. I'm willing to stipulate that the details will work. (Although other people will have to spend months making it a reality.)
- mark 8-24-2007 7:54 pm
For me its more like swimming in it.
(though Mark, I have taken great pleasure in spinning around on a swiveling chair and telling other people what codes to write.)
- L.M. 8-24-2007 7:58 pm