Thinking In Code
Creativity doesn’t wait for the perfect moment, I often find myself daydreaming interesting ideas in code at the worst times. Almost like an artist painting some imaginary canvas lost within the mind. Imagining images is one thing; our minds are already accustomed to visualizing ideas or memories. Humming a cadence or a melody is also a creative practice the mind is used to. When thoughts race through our head certainly there must be some internal language of thought that propagates through the mind. Creativity is intelligence having fun. This is what I believe makes a fateful epiphany almost euphoric, but has one ever stopped to think…What does the mind visualize when thinking in code?
Thinking in code is a blend of various cognitive processes all going on at once. The breadth of coding requires many considerations and well planning. For the mind this means combing creative and analytical thinking patterns to solve problems. Imagine an infinite white board, our canvas, where you can freely architect solutions or ideas. In another dimension of thought you have an infinite, what I guess we’ll call a sort of mental text-editor, some place in the mind where you imagine the source code to your solution. The mind chains blocks of thoughts in the form of mental pseudo-code forming patterns of if-else-conditionals or iteration loops , etc, the language isn’t necessarily a constraint here in the context of thought.
All these interactions form a kind of harmony like stringing the notes of a musical scale in tune. Where every software language or framework is a different key or modality respectively. It is truly a beautiful thing to experience a thought in code and this inspires me to learn more by solving real problems with software. It is both an artistic and analytical exercise that produces innovative multi-media pieces. So I wrote this article to send a message of positivity for anyone who may be interested in learning to code.
If you are a youth, I encourage you even more because art is all about expression and to be expressed implies to be heard, to make a change; remember technology is what unites our world. On that note, cheers and I would like to actually challenge anyone who has experienced a thought in code and would like to share. #thinkingincode
Happy dev-ing y’all, peace out ✌
Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.
