Ask HN: Do you feel like you “think like a computer?” | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Do you feel like you “think like a computer?”

8 pointsvuciv116 comments

I find that as I've grown more and more as a computer scientist, my way of thinking has shifted. It's in the little details.

It's as though I see processes I have to undertake in my life in terms of "maximizing" or "efficiency."

I don't think this has been bad for me, since I often think of maximizing my enjoyment, health, and other general good things.

Do other people in tech notice this shift, or am I just growing up? Or is it just me?

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I don't think that I think "like a computer", but rather I think about the design of systems/processes more. As I would expect, say, a visual artist to think about the visual design and aspects of things more than a non-artist. Or a musician (as evidenced by music-centric friends) to notice acoustics and other properties of spaces and media more than non-musicians. But artists don't "think like a painting" and musicians don't "think like an instrument".

Computers, themselves, don't "think" about efficiency and maximizing, they think literally (and I do know some people who take everything too literally, I would say they "think like computers" in the sense that they lack humor and imagination and creativity). Instead I'd say I think like a computer scientist/systems thinker. I think about what collection of actions and conditions would achieve a goal most effectively. This can be in several regards:

- Most efficient

- Most repeatable

- Most sustainable

These are the same kinds of things that I think about in developing/designing software systems. But I'm not thinking like a computer.

Geez, I hope I don't think like a computer. They can be such incredible idiots. "Oh sorry, I have to drop displaying the whole page because you left an extra flyspeck comma here." "Oh, sorry, I can't look through this line of comma-separated strings with this array function, tell me to turn it into an array then I'll do it." AGGGGGGH!

App: "Tut, tut, you didn't cross that 't'."

Me: "Then how did you know it was a 't' ??"

App: "Never mind. Just go do it while I relax a bit."

Me: "OK try it now."

App: "Whoops! Syntax jubilation error in line 1 character 1."

Me: "Where?"

App: "That's not my job. I do as I'm told. "

Yes and apparently it's one of the signs of high functioning autism. I started painting recently and now I'm breaking down even people's faces to shades, layers and highlights.

Oh well. It's fun.

Isn’t that just normal artist behavior? Musicians hear tones in things like air conditioner vents, and rhythms in their laundry dryers. That doesn’t seem like it implies autism?

Sometimes the way a computer works is a useful model for thinking about your thoughts, but you don't actually think that way. If you believe that you actually do, it can be self-fulfilling, limiting, and even deny your humanity.

You are not a computer, not even close. Unfortunately, we are often temped to think we are. It's a cause of the social disfunction techies are known for. Don't be so self-limiting. To think we are like a computer can be useful, but it can be a crutch.

It’s fairly close to say you are a computer, or at least a cluster. Rather, we are a wet-ware, fault tolerant computer. We have some randomness and unpredictability of course, and these are a function of how fragile and dense the system is.

I was just talking to SO (non-tech) about this! I don’t know if it’s a good or bad thing, but it came up because SO and other non-tech friends seemed to be so impressed by my ability to detect edge cases in everyday things.

I am not a “rockstar” engineer - mostly I just tend to think in terms of truth tables, or case coverage because that’s a huge part of my day job.

Not during waking hours. Back when I was working long hours as a junior developer, I would have lucid nightmares every night of being a 5-cell simplex. I would reprogram myself while asleep for hours until I woke up. The more I tried to program it the more complex it would get.

As someone that started his career in real time embedded systems, debugging hardware and writing code close to the "metal" I definitely do but not the way you suggest, I simply can't overlook how things are designed and built on the lower level even when those are relatively stupid devices.

Sometimes I would like to tell my programmer teammates to "imagine if you were the computer, what would be faster to do", when it comes to think about optimizing a process or something like that.

Simple and short answer: Yes, a thousand times yes.

Do you find that it has impacted you socially?

Absolutely. Both in a positive way, and a negative.

Positive: it's allowed me to be more analytical in my relationships, work, and thinking. I tend not to care for others interactions, but not in a way that removes the empathetic responses required for most.

I am a programmer and an electrical/mechanical engineer (robotics) so thinking in terms of systems tends to aid in my work and projects. My way of thinking gravitated me to the work I do, not the other way around as most would assume.

Negative: Others are put off by the fact that I tend not to care for the small minutiae of the day, and that I tend to be more focused on work than other activities.

I wouldn't have it any other way. I surround myself with people who think in the same way, and don't pretend to enjoy things or people who I don't for any long amount of time, but small social interactions are something required to be social and so I don't have a problem with that either.

No, and I think that's part of my problem.

Yes, absolutely.

Do you find that it has been negative while you socialize?

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