Programming Intuition

Programming IntuitionGlenn VanderburgRelevance, Inc.glenn@thinkrelevance.com

Last Year: Tactical DesignSkillz

Number of Programmers

Last Year: 3 TacticsDo One ThingDRYSLAP (Single Level of Abstraction Principle)

Last year: What you doThis year: How you think

ECONTALKPaul Graham on3 August 2009econtalk.org

http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2009/08/graham_on_start.html, starting at 38:49

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne6tB2KiZuk

NoteFrequency (Hz)Wavelength (cm)D5554.3762.2B4466.1674A4415.383.1F 4349.2398.8E4311.13111D4277.18124B3233.08148A3207.65166F 3174.61198E3155.56222B2116.54296

Frederic ChopinNocturne, op. 27 #2with intervals colored:P1 P4 P5m3 M3 m6 M6M2 m7m2 M7A4 d5

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1QM6YZC45g&t=4m24s

Why Do Musicians Make Good Programmers?

Three Stories

Smell?

Vision

Hearing

Kinesthesia

Beauty?

Cultivating aSense of Code

Seeing patternsKnowing its possible (and desirable)PracticingPracticing outside programming Tools that help (visualization and listening tools, immediate tools)

Benot Mandelbrot:There was a long hiatus of a hundred years where drawing did not play any role in mathematics because hand and pencil and ruler were exhausted. They were well understood and no longer in the forefront. And the computer did not exist.

Benot Mandelbrot:When I came in this game, there was a total absence of intuition. One had to create an intuition from scratch. Intuition as it was trained by the usual toolsthe hand, the pencil, and the rulerfound these shapes quite monstrous and pathological. The old intuition was misleading.

Benot Mandelbrot:Intuition is not something that is given. I've trained my intuition to accept as obvious shapes which were initially rejected as absurd, and I find everyone else can do the same.

Policeman: Oh, why do I always get hooked up with these spook details? Monsters, graves, bodies Wood: Cue flying saucer!Wood: And cut! Print! Were moving on! That was perfect!Producer: Perfect? Mr. Wood, do you know anything about the art of film production?Wood: Well, I like to think so.Producer: That cardboard headstone tipped over. This graveyard is obviously phony.Wood: Nobody will ever notice that! Filmmaking is not about the tiny details, its about the big picture!

David Lean: I just love making movies. I have a sort of burst of adrenaline when I get behind a camera. I just love them. I like lenses. I like looking through the camera. I like composing pictures.