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Comment by RobertKerans | Hacker News Reader

Thank you for posting this. A couple of months ago I built out the design then all the FE code for a prototype app, and recorded the whole process as J was doing it, mainly as an experiment to see where o could improve a few aspects of my designing/developing.

It was all a huge faff as I was just recording short screen captures using QuickTime. But it's definitely the most productive I've been for a very long time, as well as ending up with designs better than anything else I've done for the last year. I did it at work in the office over a few days, so couldn't really talk my way through it (which I think would have improved things still further). I haven't repeated the technique because of the (non programming) effort involved, but Obs seems very good, and something that should push me to try to implement the technique a lot more.

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One thing that helped me was screen recording my editor session and then re-watching it on the highest playback speed. You start to get a feel for the arc of laying out the code, what refactoring operations look like. Most code is selection, map, map, filter, reduce, re-join, etc. Watching your actions get played back, allows you to re-think those thoughts but in the third person. Mirrors help, video helps, we are not ourselves, once you realize that, optimization becomes much easier.

> Most code is selection, map, map, filter, reduce, re-join, etc

In which language do you code?

I take it they're speaking generally, as that covers all languages: map something to data, take that data and do something to it, map it back out to something a human or computer wants.

> Mirrors help, video helps, we are not ourselves, once you realize that, optimization becomes much easier.

It's funny, in two of the areas I've worked in (tailoring and illustration) I was taught techniques that are analogues to this. With illustration, if you draw from a reference, one of the ways to improve accuracy is to turn the reference image upside down, which basically stops your brain seeing it as the thing it is an image of. Instead it becomes a structure of shapes, it's easier to draw. With tailoring, when cutting on a model/dummy, I was taught to continually check the work in a mirror instead of always looking directly at it -- again, I think a way to stop the brain automatically filling in structures and shapes, to force it to see the piece as a whole from a different perspective.

How did you come across these techniques? Do you know of any body of research that covers this?

With my kid, we practice drawing and eating with the non-dominant hand or try and draw something from a different orientation.

I was trained (and worked, for a short time) in tailoring/fashion, and was also trained and worked (for a longer time) as a designer and illustrator. I was just taught to do this as a matter of course (by tutors and by technicians). It's just finding ways to trick your brain into actually thinking about things instead of relying on (habitually ingrained) automatic movements which tend to cause you to miss obvious errors.

Re illustration, this is quite common when explaining how to draw from a reference picture. Not at any detailed length as far as I can ever remember, literally just "turn the photograph upside down when you're drawing from it" (doesn't really need much explanation, that just how it works). As far as introductory books go I can remember "Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" goes through this.

Re tailoring, the issue is that you tend to fuck up the balance of things in 3D when you're sitting staring at specific bits of it, even when you step back you only tend to see what you want if you've been at it for a while. You need to be able to see it from a. different angles at the same time, and b. not just directly through your eyes

The non-dominant hand will work for what you're doing, it's a good thing to do I think (in a way I wish I'd been taught to practise using my right more when I was a child). The reference image technique is specifically to increase accuracy though, so slightly different aim

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