
Ask HN: Does anyone dream of code? - rs86
I have been having this problem lately. When I close my eyes and try to sleep my mind wanders and soon enough I am thinking about code, programming mentally. And I wake in the middle of the night and I am still mentally coding in a semi hypnotic state. I have slight OCD if that matters. Does any one feel the same? It is as if my mind never turns off.
======
edw519
I've been doing this for 30 years. Why? Because I work in such a way to make
it happen. What you call a problem, I embrace as a gift.

Of all the things I've discussed here at Hacker News over the years, this is
probably the #1 subject. Most programmers have the opposite problem of you:
they have trouble turning their minds _on_.

I always turn my computer off several hours before bed. The last thing I do
every night is review hard copies of code with a red marker. Many nights I
dream of my project/code. Sometimes I even jump up in the middle of the night
and go to my computer, write down my thoughts, or lately, voice record them.

Sometimes I am incredibly grateful for the "gift" I've received from "outside
myself" in the middle of the night. Other times I'm annoyed. For every cool
insight, there are many false positives: What was I thinking? But the
positives far outweigh the negatives.

I don't know why this works, but I can't imagine accomplishing all I do
without it. Many programmers struggle for years to turn this "mind CRON" on.
You already have the gift. I suggest you find a way to embrace it and turn
your lemons into lemonade. You don't have a problem; you have a gift. Make it
count!

My original HN post:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=191275](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=191275)

Also #49 here:
[http://v25media.s3.amazonaws.com/edw519_mod.pdf](http://v25media.s3.amazonaws.com/edw519_mod.pdf)

~~~
smnscu
A lot of programmers I respect like to work on printed out code, and it's
something I enjoy as well. Furthermore I'd love if we could work completely
offline, with pen and paper.

~~~
g00gler
> Furthermore I'd love if we could work completely offline, with pen and
> paper.

Why is that? I loathe writing code on paper, seems like it'd be a serious
regression.

~~~
Lordarminius
Really?

I have the exact opposite view. I love writing it my code on paper. It makes
me feel like the creative part of the equation while I leave the 'mechanical'
computation to the dumb machine. Debugging and understanding difficult code
samples is easier too.

I once read that Knuth(?) never used a computer and wrote everything on paper
for his sectetary to type.

------
nstart
Yep. Not so much the act of coding but weird abstract concepts around code. To
the point where once when I was working with Chrome and Firefox extensions and
trying to get notifications to work just right, I woke up from deep sleep, and
in a daze started shaking my wife saying that the notification were attacking
us because I had made an error in a loop (she related this to me the next
morning. I couldn't remember it :D ).

~~~
jrumbut
This reminded me of a dream I used to have of getting into the car, opening up
the Chrome developer tools, and using Javascript to drive.

~~~
Lordarminius
> This reminded me of a dream I used to have of getting into the car, opening
> up the Chrome developer tools, and using Javascript to drive.

An aside.

Reading some of the hilarious comments here I am inclined to think they could
be compiled into a bestselling nerd comic

~~~
mango86
Indeed. Or just sci-fi comedy.

------
relics443
When I go to sleep after having worked on something complex and didn't fully
resolve it, I'll almost always dream about trying to solve it. Sometimes I see
code, sometimes it's more abstract, but it's always disconcerting. My wife
says I mumble things like, "I'm pretty sure 'also' is a keyword unless I'm
losing my mind and need to check the documentation"

~~~
emerongi
The worst cases for me are with math-heavy problems. I'll see code mixed with
shapes and graphs. The mornings suck, because you wake up knowing you were
only half-asleep.

That's why I like to play some easy games or read a book 1hr before going to
sleep. Sometimes they induce creativity though and are counter-active.

------
pigpen34
I started out in system administration and network engineering before
switching to programming. I once had a dream that my cigarette needed an IP
address before I could smoke it.

~~~
benchaney
I had a similar dream about my pants once.

------
Lordarminius
This is not unusual. The brain processes and organizes information when we
sleep, just that we don't all usually remember this happening.

I find that I tend to think about things in my sleep on three occasions:

1 when the activity is new

2.when I am sufficiently stimulated and excited by the material.

3\. when I am worried or upset

This 'dream state'used to occur to me in the past when I actively played
chess, when I was in school studying for exams and nowadays when I'm
struggling with (and mastering) a new concept or paradigm in programming.
Recognizing it for what it is - a process of deep archiving and
reorganization, I have come to embrace it and even be happy when it occurs,
since material I have processed in this way terms to be deeply ingrained in my
memory for longer.

------
Zelphyr
I had this happen a lot when I first started out but not so much anymore for
some reason.

One thing I remember that has always amused me is how I would dream about this
amazing code. It was so amazing that I would simply have to wake up so I could
write it down. But, the few times I could actually wake myself up, as soon as
I thought about it (before it quickly faded away) I said to myself, "WTF was
that? There's no way that would work!"

------
mymistrmister
This is true for everything in life. Do some thing alot, and your mind will
start processing it while you are asleep.

I used to have such dreams about EverQuest. So I eventually realized I should
play less :P

It's called the Tetris Effect, read:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris_effect)

~~~
Insanity
Yup, I had the same for Jedi Knight, Counter-Strike, Left4Dead. With Left4Dead
I had it particularly bad, when I would walk to school in the morning - still
half asleep from playing until late the night before, I would "hallucinate"
the sounds of the game.

Even though I stopped gaming somewhere during university, I still have dreams
about those games every now and then.

OT: Just like other's in this thread, I have dreamed about code as well, with
a similar frustration to wake up knowing the beautiful solution was all
imaginary :-)

------
dbattaglia
Yes, but not in the literal sense for me. I never see any text or code but
rather some abstract version of the problem I'm trying to solve. I dislike it
to be honest, it makes me feel like I'm not getting any rest, especially when
I wake up in the middle of the night from a code dream only to continue in
that loop while I'm half awake.

One time I went to sleep after starting a take home code test for a job
interview; I woke up a few hours later having some intense dreams about it and
ended up knowing exactly what to do. I finished it at 4am. I didn't end up
getting the job, but they said during the interview they really liked the
code.

~~~
dsacco
Would you mind sharing why they (said they) ultimately chose not to extend an
offer? Just curious about an anecdote from a hiring/recruiting perspective.

~~~
dbattaglia
They never gave a reason. That said, I felt like the interview with my
potential team mates (one of the 3 interview rounds that day) really did not
go as well as I would have liked. I could have done better describing my
current work and projects. We did some whiteboard design question and ran out
of time, looking back I could have done a lot better on that had I put more
thought into it. I'm not bitter or anything, it was not my best in person
interview by a long shot.

------
sofaofthedamned
When I was 14 in 1986 writing Atari ST stuff I had something come to me in a
dream.

The ST had a notoriously slow text output system. The display was a bitmap and
there was no hardware acceleration. Somebody called Darek Mihocka came out
with 'Quick ST' which made the text display quicker than stock. As a newbie I
wanted to beat this, so I learned 68000 assembly and did the usual
optimisation - unrolling loops, precomputing bitmaps etc. I got faster than
Quick ST but then he had an update which nearly doubled my speed.

I did everything I could to work out what he'd done, including looking at the
Motorola reference manuals, nothing came up. I was going crazy. Bear in mind
these were the days when there was no middleware, it was you versus the
hardware, and if they did it better it's because their code was better.

So I went to bed one night and the 'move.p' opcode came to mind. I woke up and
read about it - turns out this opcode took a 16 bit number and split it into 2
8bit codes and placed them 2 bytes apart. This matched the ST interleaved
bitmap perfectly - I doubled my speed and beat Darek.

So, yeah, a dream did actually improve my code. I do miss those days where
decent code beat driver, middleware and other issues.

------
Xophmeister
Just two nights ago, my wife came to join me, which woke me into a half sleep.
I immediately grabbed something on my nightstand that reminds me of her and
thrust it into the air, then I started to try to explain (somewhat
incomprehensibly, apparently) the unit tests that would run against her.
That's not a euphemism and the waving the thing in the air, I think, made me
believe that her unit tests would run first, so I could get back to sleep
sooner.

Needless to say, she's still laughing at my antics!

~~~
tupshin
Mock the wife

------
sarreph
Insanity is when you wake up screaming that your build failed, and then
realise you weren't dreaming.

------
lpa22
I have this happen to me relatively often (about once a month). The best part
about it is that I make meaningful connections and actually solve problems
related to the code that I am envisioning, and I wake up and I am able to
implement what I dream about.

This usually only happens the night after a long day working on very mentally
challenging problems, it rarely happens after easy days.

------
adjwilli
Usually when I'm learning a new programming language or technique, and just at
the point where I'm starting to grok it but still having challenges, I'll
dream that I'm programming in that language. Usually a day or two after that,
I'll feel like I've finally acquired that skill. I remember this very clearly
happening when I was about 22 and was playing around with Javascript and AJAX
calls. It happened a couple other times after that, I think when learning
Objective-C for iOS too, and maybe once again when learning how
NSLayoutConstraints work.

------
Gophyr
I try not to write code for about an hour or so before going to bed. I find
that if I work on code, especially a complicated problem, I will dream about
finding a beautiful solution (without actually seeing or remembering what I
do). It's really annoying to wake up and realize it was all just a dream.

------
40acres
I studied for an interview with Google late last year. I did a lot of
algorithm and data structure exercises along with system design work. The
study was intense for me, I spent about 3 hours a day working on problems in
CLRS for about 5 weeks. I would dream of algorithms a few times a week and
think about problems constantly.

Unfortunately I didn't get the job but it was really interesting to experience
how my mind operated when a large chunk of my attention was consistently
focused on complex topics.

~~~
madamelic
Yeah, next time don't study.

I am convinced that Google interviews are rigged. I got on the phone with an
"interviewer" and he sounded like someone strangled his pet in front of him.

I knew I wouldn't get past then because he didn't really seem at all
interested in interviewing me.

I wasn't like Homebrew Qualified but I definitely wasn't Fizzbuzz Unqualified.

------
relics443
In CS 101 I spent all night working on my final homework, walked into class,
put the printed solution on the professor's desk, sat down in a desk right in
front of his and fell asleep.

I dreamt about the homework problem, and realized I had made a mistake. I
immediately woke up, grabbed the paper, and made the correction. The whole
class burst into laughter, but the professor didn't seem disturbed. Later he
told me something like that happens every few years (he's been teaching for
30).

------
hosh
I have dreamed of code. There are times when it feels like I am patterning the
dream space (each space has its own rules, plot, feel, etc).

When I was working with Kubernetes intensely, I was moving around abstract
"lego blocks" representing concepts. The space was black, 3D, no gravity. (I
remember someone coming into the space to visit and I told her I'm still
working on it...)

There were times when I was trying to figure out something in the dream and a
different mind-thread was hacking code that maps to the plot of the original
mind-thread.

I have walked in dream spaces where I took a corner off the happy path and
watched the world glitch for a moment and start procedurally generating.

There were dreams about startups, working in an office (I work remotely most
of the time).

Lucidity and clarity varies. Sometimes it is very clear, the visuals and the
coding concepts I am working with are sharp. Sometimes they are fuzzy. It is
occasionally lucid (how aware I am that I am dreaming). That "semi-hypnotic"
state seems like it is not high on the lucidity spectrum. That's pretty normal
if you are coding in a semi-hypnotic state while coding during the day.

I usually meditate before falling asleep, try to offload things in my day's
working memory. It's usually whatever I am binging on, whether it is coding,
anime, or even martial arts or whatever. For example, there was a time when I
binge watch My Little Ponies and saw the ponies cavorting in the phosphenes.
I'm not surprise this happens with code.

------
amingilani
Yes, when I'm utterly engrossed in a problem, like when my routine is
basically eat, sleep, work and repeat. I dream about it as well.

It isn't limited to code, when I was a kid I used to wake up dreaming of
Tiberium Sun, and Red Alert 2. It's lately been code though.

------
bluebeard
If you think the dreams are weird how about this. There was a period when I
was was spending a lot of time writing code every day. And there were some
nights where I'd fall asleep then partially wake up and look at the window to
see light cast on the curtain in a way that would sometimes spell a message
that helped me debug, figure out a problem, or discover a new technique. Or
give me an idea for an operating system's logo...

~~~
rs86
Are u bill?

------
OJFord
Only pattern-based stuff.

I first noticed this with PCB layouts - I'd be moving parts and re-
routing/prettifying manually for long straights and only 45deg corners.

Also refactoring code, particularly in an aesthetic way as if making the style
consistent/readable before doing something with it - shortening lines,
aligning data structure entries, whatever.

It happens if I play something like tetris before sleeping or while tired,
too.

------
sappapp
Try reading fiction before bed.

I used to spend time thinking about code before sleep. The long term effects
is the larger problem. Not giving your mind time to do something else will
eventually lead to burn out.

Credits to Tim Ferris for this routine.

~~~
song
Ha, I've never ever been able to start reading a good fiction book before
sleeping without either ending up finishing the book and not having slept at
all or passing out from exhaustion in the middle of the night after I notice
that I've reread the same line 3-4 times.

------
OhSoHumble
I had a dream that I had racked up a huge amount of money at a bar. In
response to my exorbitant tab, the barkeep told me that he would not be able
to charge me any money for it if I ran Kubernetes in production.

------
malux85
Yes, this is quite common.

Different types of code dreams are common too - code nightmares where you get
caught in small, infinite loops or are unable to escape oscillation between a
small set of bad operations

Or happy code dreams where you float above the system and observe high levels
of interaction and execution, watching data flow like water, and execution
happen rythmically like beats of music.

------
sanxiyn
I sometimes do. It is particularly satisfying when I debug (correctly!) the
code in dream which I struggled to debug while awake.

~~~
josephcooney
Yep. My subconscious often gives me very interesting "left field" type problem
solving/troubleshooting advice during my programming dreams.

------
mseidl
I never really dream of code, but I did have a funny dream of me writing
something and trying to get girls to check out what I wrote. I was like, "hey
ladies, check out this code"

~~~
not_real_name
I think that's # 5 in "Top 10 Worst Pickup Lines ever"... ;)

------
paulmd
Yes, all the time. I was a military academy cadet and I train all the time in
my mind, I dream 12-24 times a year that I have managed to get back in and do
basic/etc. I was a TA and I prep/teach lessons in my mind, and I also slice
and dice code in my mind all the time.

I never know which I am going to get but coding is the most pleasant of them,
by far. The higher my stress, the more likely it's not fun.

The fact that my current job is to untangle legacy Java code and we actively
oppose any "unnecessary" changes hurts me, because I can't not untangle it in
my head, working or sleeping. Resting/playing is OK though. That's why it's
important.

Of course, we don't have any unit tests, because how else could we employ 2
testers per coder? And we obviously don't have any time for that useless
stuff.

------
Raphmedia
Only when I'm stuck on something.

I find myself working on it half asleep in my bed. It pretty much always
results in finding the solution or at the very least a good lead.

------
twfarland
Yep, and it's not pleasant when you're lucid enough to know you're dreaming,
but not lucid enough to be able to reason properly. It's just a general
feeling of trying to solve something, without any payoff.

~~~
aethertron
I've had several experiences of pointlessly struggling with a dream computer,
or a more abstract sort of programming-flavoured dream puzzle.

That's where you want to get lucid enough to realise that struggling with the
problem isn't a worthwhile pursuit now, and go do something fun instead :)

------
b123400
I do. But it doesn't happen very often, and I don't hate it.

The clearest memory I have, is when I was 15, debugging some hacky PHP codes
for days still unable to find a solution. I dreamed that piece of code and
suddenly wake up with a fix, it was a pretty nice feeling.

Also an year ago I started learning Haskell, despite reading a lot of
tutorials I wasn't able to understand what a monad is. One day I woke up and
find myself understood the concept. I don't remember the content of the dream,
but it was a sweet dream and I slept longer than usual.

I am not sure if I have OCD, but I like coding so dreaming code is not an
issue for me.

------
Raed667
Not always, but when I'm immersed into a project long enough and I'm thinking
about all its problems all day long, I dream of "solutions".

But this happens only in those periods where my day is basically 100% code.

------
VladimirGolovin
When I was learning Haskell, I had a coding dream with a twist.

In that dream, I wrote small programs, compiled and executed them. The twist
was that the result of the execution was presented to me in the form of
physical constructs, composed of square hollow section pipes welded together.

I would then walk around the structure, examine it, and wonder, why a
particular part of the structure is welded to the whole structure diagonally,
instead of a 90-degree angle. Must be a bug somewhere.

~~~
zingermc
I had a somewhat similar dream where I had an epiphany that everything in the
universe is controlled by code, which I had the privileges to edit for some
reason. I remember typing some HTML (`<span style="color:red">` and `</span>`)
to create these small physical blocks. Slapping the blocks on either side of
any object would turn it red!

~~~
hartator
Span shouldn't be blocs! You are dreaming wrong! :)

------
Arinerron
Yeah. Most teens don't have dreams about code, but I do. I fall asleep
thinking about some bug, and wake uo with a solution. Unfortunately, I
sometimes forget it :P

------
_agdistis
I have plenty of dreams about problems I'm working on. I usually end up
dreaming of a way to solve them too.

Though I did have this one dream where I was able to open up a virtual console
next to anyone I saw and could program them to do whatever I felt like. I
could do this with just random objects too, not just people. That'd be an
interesting game idea now that I think about it.

~~~
9214
elseheartbreak dot com

------
reboog711
I used to dream in code all the time. It was when I was tackling a programming
problem I was having trouble with. My mind would often solve it while I sleep;
and I'd be able to solve the issue quickly in the morning.

It happens less these days. Either because I am more experienced or because
development tools have improved; I no longer get stuck like I used.

------
SippinLean
Same here (also diagnosed OCD), this might be more related to your sleep
hygiene though. No screens before bed, no coffee after lunch, learn to
meditate, etc. Turning off your brain is a difficult skill to learn, it
certainly got harder once my dev career was serious.

Somewhat related: I dated a cellist who said she'd read music in her dreams.

------
keyboardhitter
Yes, I call this "terminal brain". Issues that I want to fix, or things that
I've been working on whirl in my head in an abstract 2d visual state - flashes
of the colors I'm using in iTerm, and random words repeating over and over...
vague imagery of tailing a log file... it feels like my mind is creating
scenarios and trying to solve many things at the same time.

I think it's both a blessing and a curse. On one hand, some days I wake up and
immediately know how to solve problems, or I'll think of new things to try.
I've also had many nights where I come to understand concepts from 'exploring'
the whirlpool of vagueness. Solidifying the abstraction helps a lot, I guess.

On the other hand, this phenomenon can be very distracting or distressing at
times. I have a terrible memory of trying to have sex and all I could think
about was Redis.

------
urs2102
I would have this dream that I could access the Lisp REPL that controlled my
dream, but I would accidentally use the loop macro wrong and I'd be paralyzed
in front of my computer for the rest of my dream, unable to kill the process.

Actually terrifying thinking about it again. Made me very wary of live
programming XD

------
nul_byte
I once got really ill and went into a high fever, the whole time in my head I
was debugging myself with code, was very strange.

Other then that I never dream of code, but sometimes when I am half asleep in
bed I start thinking about issues and playing out scenarios I could try to fix
something, or implement a new feature.

~~~
wolfgang42
I've had this happen once, and it was not a pleasant experience. (Try setting
a breakpoint on your own brain sometime and see how much _you_ like it.)
Kenneth Reitz, who wrote Python's requests library, went crazy[1] (his words)
and had a similar experience, though his was psychosis-induced rather than
fever-induced.

> The earth represented an "ideal" logical volume of data (life), and the
> universe was the collective storage LUN. I was using Amazon's Dynamo
> algorithm to replicate life, with eventual consistency, throughout the
> universe by watering plants in the garden. Now, Amazon actually uses
> Requests to perform all internal API control operations for AWS, effectively
> making my code partially responsible for the operation of the internet
> itself. See the theme? [...] I was very keen to have the doctors and my
> family look up the Dynamo whitepaper, to prove the legitimacy of my quest.

1: [https://www.kennethreitz.org/essays/mentalhealtherror-an-
exc...](https://www.kennethreitz.org/essays/mentalhealtherror-an-exception-
occurred)

------
adnanh
It's your subconscious working on a problem...

One example would be scenario where you can't remember some word, and you
decide you can't remember it and stop thinking about it, your brain continues
to search for it in the background (subconsciously)... and then the word comes
to you like an interrupt.

I had the same thing with studying for exams (I would dream of the lecture
notes and when I wake up in the morning I can perfectly recall everything).

There was a study posted at HN where not completing a task at work, leaves
your brain working on it even after you leave your office, only to have the
solution pop up in the middle of the night.

All of this can be a result of a stress. You need to take a vacation and
relax. Recharge your batteries or you'll be feeling drained really soon...

------
FesterCluck
I've had this problem before. I dream as a javascript runtime vm, compiling
the code as it's thought of. Infinite recursion hurts, literally. Other than
that, if I'm lucid of the dream I rarely solve problems, just repeating the
same road blocks over and over.

------
a3n
Why is it a problem? Are you getting enough rest/sleep? Do you have enough
control over your day that you can rest when you need to? Are you effective in
your work and personal life (controlling for OCD)?

If the answer to most of that is mostly yes, you're doing pretty well.

------
wingerlang
Not code specifically, but I sometimes dream about humans in some form of
"modular" sense. Like if their feelings would be contained in one class/part
of a program, or their torso would be accessed via methods or something like
that.

As someone else mentioned, it's likely the tetris effect. I had a similar
feeling while playing the game "triple" town where you want to match three
bears items next to each other, I kept seeing items and people in terms of
"are they next to each other" while walking around (especially when a bit of
alcohol was involved).

------
tluyben2
Yep. I love it when that happens. Happens especially when writing complex code
instead of just rattling off CRUD. The best time was when I worked for months
on a Prolog project for uni, every day, all day with very complex concepts to
crack. During the day when I went outside, my brain transformed everything in
Prolog clauses; cars, roads, houses, bikes, people talking to me. And at night
my dreams were in code as well. I now have it when doing embedded code or game
code.

Edit: Come to think of it, this 'free shrooms' experience is reason enough to
not do CRUD apps :)

------
otikik
I have done this from time to time, when I was really stressed, and working
too many hours.

Once my life went back to a sane pace, where I could enjoy some personal free
time, the problem went away.

Now I have a baby and I dream of diapers.

------
coldcode
Last night I dreamt about having to work in a programming environment where
objects appears horizontally and operations appeared vertically like a
timeline. On second thought it was more of a nightmare.

------
tarboreus
This is normal, and gamers also experience it. It's only an issue if it's
interfering with your sleep regularly. You'll find that it's most acute when
you're deep in a problem or learning something completely new. If you find
yourself in a "loop," get up and read a few pages from a book that you're not
too excited about (not code related, history or a novel). The dreams should
recede when you're under less cognitive load during the day, which should
happen as you learn in your role.

------
slantedview
Programming in your sleep or in the shower or any other place away from the
computer is awesome, because it's often where you'll achieve a breakthrough
(even in your sleep)! As Rich Hickey would say, slowing down and stepping away
from the computer forces you to think more deeply about a problem and explore
it more. I view it as a good thing, but it usually only happens to me when
I've been deep in a problem for a while, so it's an occasional thing.

------
stephschie
I can't read in my dreams. I'm able to dream that I'm reading but the whole
understanding of what the text actually should transport isn't there.

------
lordkrandel
I don't. I had dreams about my workplace, but it never happened to me to dream
myself at the desk writing on a keyboard. Funny, I'm on a computer up to 10
hrs a day. I always dream about people, and I'm never alone in my dreams. Even
when I'm breathing with trouble at night, I have someone trying to save me.
Curious, it makes me feel less "isolated" now that I'm thinking about it.

------
csorrell
Yeah, happens a lot if I go to sleep without enough down time after coding. My
dreams have me going over code that is needed to perform some kind of dream
action, like sitting, walking, or whatever else. I'll often get stuck in a
loop and go over it again and again, trying to get the logic right all night
long. My wife thinks it's hilarious because sometimes I'll talk in my sleep
about it.

------
jcahill84
Absolutely. It's hard to turn your mind off when you're thinking about
something complex and rewarding. Some recent study I read said we sleep to
forget, so maybe this is your mind's way of making sure you don't forget the
progress you've made on whatever particular thing you're working on.

I've found that watching some boring TV or having a drink (alcohol) before bed
helps.

------
codePrady
The first few years in my career when I'd code for a few hours non-stop then
crash on the beanbag at my desk, I dreamt a lot of bug fixes, very few of
which stuck in my mind after I woke up. It's basically the last thought I had
before I went to sleep which affected my dreams all my life. If that last
thought is code, then so is the content of the dream.

------
gibbitz
In that state between sleeping and waking I am often debugging my inability to
wake. It's not as though I'm sitting in front of a monitor, but the lines of
code are my entire worldview and no matter what I change the alarm keeps going
off. I guess if I were a better programmer I would dream that I was writing a
program to extend the night...

------
bbotond
Sometimes when I'm stuck with a hard problem, I find the simple and obvious
solution in a dream. This happens most often when the problem is algorithmic.

When I struggle with modeling problems, I often solve them in the trance-like
state right before falling asleep. These solutions are much more elegant than
what I would be capable of while being fully awake.

------
cafard
Not uncommonly. The first instance I can remember was during an automata &
formal languages class: I dreamt of cars pulling out of parking spaces and
going back in, and on waking realized that it had to do with the pumping lemma
for regular languages. Last night there was a coding dream, but I don't
remember the details.

------
random_upvoter
Once during a bout of fever I dreamt I _was_ a running Pascal program. Believe
me, it's no fun being a computer.

~~~
kant312
Thank god I'm not alone :p

Almost every time I have a fever, I end up dreaming about code or diagrams.
Sometimes even live CSS coding. And yes, it's awful and you can't escape.

------
slantaclaus
Hell yeah, stresses me out too. It probably even gave me hypoglycemia a couple
of times

When I was studying organic chemistry, I had some pretty cool dreams about
aromatic molecules.

Bank finance class gave me an extremely revelatory nightmare about interest
rates once.

Dreams about stuff you're learning are almost always constructive though. It's
a good thing.

------
teilo
Yes, but my dreams blend together code and the other people in my life in a
bizarre manner which only makes sense inside the dream itself, but is
otherwise ludicrous. It is as if I am trying to debug other people, which of
course never works, and thus it inevitably turns into an anxiety dream.

------
pizlonator
When I'm hitting my stress limit, I dream in code. It's usually a sign that I
need to slow down.

------
csuwldcat
Sometimes, more so in my early-mid 20s, I would dream about code/architecture
issues I was having, and bizarrely, wake up with the solution. It was a trip
when I realized what had happened, so I started napping when I got stuck and
it actually worked a decent amount of the time.

------
chphipps
When I first started to learn to program, in the very first week, I slept very
little. Not because I was up late at night working but because I was so
enticed and interested in what I had been learning that my brain refused to
stop thinking with that mentality. So yes, I do.

------
bryanrasmussen
Sometimes if I've been doing a lot, also sometimes I have dreams where the
dream is just code scrolling in front of my eyes. This second type of coding
dream generally happens if I'm doing more than 10+ hours a day of a very
verbose language.

------
z0noxz
I have the same problem, with often abstract crazy problems involving myself
as part of the equation. It could be writing a system that gives me the
ability to sleep or close my eyes, but also real problems that I worked with
earlier that day.

------
nogbit
I write my best code in my head while riding my bike to/from work, in the
shower or lying in bed falling asleep. Having extended times of being
disconnected enables your brain to chew on things and come up with new things
to try.

------
amyjess
This sounds like it's related to the Tetris Effect:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris_effect)

I've experienced the same thing.

------
gremlinsinc
I don't really remember my dreams, my wife says I'm coding in my sleep though,
and if I'm working on a difficult problem I usually solve it instantly when I
wake up... I think maybe I really DID solve it in my sleep...

------
Belphemur
When I started coding I took upon a task way over my beginner skills.

I was working on a Minecraft plugin to give the player the ability to access a
virtual chest.

I had to dive in the code of Minecraft so deeply that I started dreaming of
creeper exploding in my code.

------
jon-wood
I occasionally do, but it always seems to take the form of finding a really
good solution to a horrible bug. Then I'll wake up full of joy at having fixed
the bug only to realise it was one entirely imagined during my dream.

------
CrossWired
Only when deeply immersed into a problem. Day to day work doesn't really get
it going for me, but if its something challenging I'll see all kind of code in
my dreams, I've woken up with 'aha' moments too.

------
smilesnd
Only thing causing me to lose sleep is trying figure out how to turn code into
cash.

------
awinter-py
When I've been paged overnight, my alarm clock integrates itself into dream
logic as something that has to be defeated so that I don't wake up. not sure
if the role assignments are random (alarm = pager = evil).

------
lightblade
Yup. This happens if I was coding right before bed with a problem not solved
yet. Most of the time the dream was about me typing random things into the
screen that doesn't make any sense.

------
smnscu
When I was cramming for exams in university I used to dream chemical
equations. I also sometimes dream of code and how to architect various stuff
I'm working on, which feels pretty good.

------
krapp
I actually can't sleep if I think about code. My mind fixates on it so much
that it keeps me awake.

When I'm awake and bored, though, I do think about code a lot, and game
mechanics, and such.

------
luis_espinoza
I don't remember. So certainly was not properly documented.

------
jagjotsingh
It happens all the time, not particularly because I am stuck on a problem.
Happens the most when learning something new and your mind wanders into a
playful state.

------
dfansteel
Often. I have, occasionally, actually implemented what I dreamt of. To date
it's only worked once. Which, when you think about it, is pretty damn amazing.

------
antfarm
When I was working on large systems with lots of interconnected parts, I used
to dream about them as navigating a building with lots of different parts and
wings.

------
ifoundthetao
I'm currently doing the OSCP, and I've been dreaming of buffer overflow
attacks the past few days.

It's encouraging too, because my dreams are accurate.

------
Grangar
In my first years of college I was a semester behind. I made up for that in 2
weeks of Christmas break.

That was the first and last time I dreamt of Java.

------
tmaly
I think this happened to me once. I try to read a little fiction right before
bed to help get my mind off work and programming.

------
6DM
Only once, when I was a little overworked in college. It was about the process
of authentication and authorization.

------
bsvalley
I dream a lot about what I could do with the money I'm making from coding.
It's never enough...

------
RUG3Y
Yes, only when I'm working on a project and spend significant time looking at
code during the day.

------
mike-cardwell
I have written code practically every day for the last 20 years. No, I never
dream about coding.

------
nunez
When I'm really in the weeds of a problem, then yes, I do.

------
deepnotderp
I've dreamt extensively about deep learning.

------
szaharna
all the time! I dreamt I was in a builder factory pattern and had a full on
battle with team create(). I was on team build()

------
crottypeter
Who doesn't?

~~~
tartuffe78
I don't, FWIW.

------
Singletoned
Electric sheep?

------
numinary1
All the time

------
segmondy
How long have you been programming?

------
unusximmortalis
oooh yes, quite often :)

