Do you guys really have schema in mind??
I also visualize me smiting the previous programmer who wrote the awful code that I have to work on but that’s another story.
So at least for me: no, definitely no schema in mind. If you're missing out on that, so am I! Affect is weird.
If programming is best done through abstract thought and doesn’t benefit from pictures, then I’ve been training since the day I was born.
One of the things I noticed is I approach a game from the point of view of how it is played, whereas most people approach games from the perspective of what it is about. I'll make a navigation game with a pirate theme as opposed to a game about pirates where you navigate.
I also don't use engines and make something from scratch each time. These factors may go hand in hand, I build up from the mechanics instead of fashioning a scene into a game.
Previously pascal, Blitz basic, Delphi, Haxe, actionscript. some other things I forget.
But I also think there are many working engineers, including some who have been in the trade for a very long time, that don't develop it.
There are surely other roads to doing good work without fluency, just like there is when forced to work in a foregin language with only modest proficiency, but I can't help but suspect it's a much more exhausting experience.
I think its why I might get a little too irritable at silly code!
But if I try to draw it? Usually I'll lose state and can't really picture it as well. I'd have to rebuild state as a graphic representation to do that.
So... I don't really know how my mind is organizing it, tbh.