well, people are different. I feel like I have narrator voice for the code, not exactly the same way books do, but still something similar.

Also when I'm trying to read code I feel distracted and annoyed by any background noise where I can recognize words, like speech or music in a familiar language. And I can't talk while coding, it messes up what I'm typing. Also I really prefer english-like languages, like ruby, to more sigil or symbol loaded, like rust, or full of abbreviations and operators, like Haskell. But I'm sure other developers have other brain pathways activated.

I have a narrator voice when reading code. It's the same narrator voice as when reading technical reports and white papers. I do sometimes struggle to process code that doesn't read well, likely because the cadence of the narrator voice gets disturbed and doesn't flow well.

I've found that my descriptions and explanations of how things work generally follow the same cadence as this narrator voice, which tends to help me explain things succinctly and transfer knowledge quickly.

I do agree it's distinctly different from the narrator voice for fiction books. I would assume that's due to the presence/lack of emotive language between the two types of writing.

Perhaps this is a similar phenomenon to the inner monologue that some people have but others don't? Or the ability to imagine various levels of detail of objects without physically seeing them? The mind is a strange beast.

Fun fact, when comprehending sign language the narrator voice is the same as when comprehending vocal language. By the same I mean that it works and "sounds" the same, but obviously it has the grammar and vocabulary of whatever sign language you're communicating in. The exact same parts of the brain are at work, too.

I think this implies that the narrator voice isn't really a "sound echo" but rather your comprehension at work. Just like when reading text.

That must be nice. My internal dialog never shuts the fuck up.

My narrator does tell me the following:

1. Are return values identical for identical arguments?

2. Are there side effects? What are those?

3. "Congratulations, this narrator here found a story that can be told in isolation!"

4. Are the variables used in close locality to their declaration

5. Are all these loops doing what I think they do? (This one requires iterations of temporary code rewrites)

6. Is the story told with high efficiency? Can some side effects be prevented?

I do have a narrator in my head although it's usually a summary or description of Whats going on. Not a literal word for word read. I also have visualizations.

Agree with sibling comments I'm almost always hearing a voice describing what I'm looking at, trying to pull the whole thing together.

Narrator voice doesn't kick in for me until a character speaks, narration is voiceless.