On: Ask HN: Why does visual programming suck?

[danblick]

As long as we're speculating: I kind of dream that maybe we'll see programming environments that take advantage of VR.

Humans are really good at remembering spaces. ("Describe for me your childhood bedroom." or "What did your third grade teacher look like?")

There's already the idea of "memory palaces" [1] suggesting you can take advantage of spatial memory for other purposes.

I wonder, what would it be like to learn or search a codebase by walking through it and looking around?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci

[TeMPOraL → danblick]

> Humans are really good at remembering spaces. ("Describe for me your childhood bedroom." or "What did your third grade teacher look like?")

Some humans. I honestly can't answer you those two questions. I'm much better in remembering what I just read than what space I just saw, and I absolutely suck at remembering (not to mention describing) faces. If you mugged me I probably wouldn't be able to describe you to police beyond the basics like gender and height (I probably won't be remembering what you were wearing).

I say this because being good at remembering spaces is like "everyone sketch a picture when trying to convey an idea" elsewhere in the thread - both are examples of what some people do, and it may be surprising to discover that not all humans are good at it.

[futhey → TeMPOraL]

I have face blindness. You may as well, or at least some degree of aphantasia.

No reason for concern, but there is supposedly an incredibly low occurrence of either.