I don't know how far this can go but it's a feeling that I've had which is relevant and some people might resonate with.
I used some tiny devices (e.g. Casio PB80 http://oldcomputermuseum.com/casio_pb80.html) as a kid to write small programs on in BASIC. It has only a single line of display and you had to sort of remember where things were to make your GOTOs work properly etc. This means that most of the program had to be in your head. You couldn't easily jump between things and see the whole thing as a single screen of text. I also remember reading that people like Ken Thompson wrote significant parts of the original UNIX on a line editor (ed). That would also mean that most of it had to be in his head in a semi parsed format.
Sure, with modern editors and IDEs, you can outsource that to the computer and focus on the more valuable stuff but I still wonder how much the grunt work of remembering things in detail is under appreciated in creative work.
I used some tiny devices (e.g. Casio PB80 http://oldcomputermuseum.com/casio_pb80.html) as a kid to write small programs on in BASIC. It has only a single line of display and you had to sort of remember where things were to make your GOTOs work properly etc. This means that most of the program had to be in your head. You couldn't easily jump between things and see the whole thing as a single screen of text. I also remember reading that people like Ken Thompson wrote significant parts of the original UNIX on a line editor (ed). That would also mean that most of it had to be in his head in a semi parsed format.
Sure, with modern editors and IDEs, you can outsource that to the computer and focus on the more valuable stuff but I still wonder how much the grunt work of remembering things in detail is under appreciated in creative work.