<story><title>To the brain, reading computer code is not the same as reading language (2020)</title><url>https://news.mit.edu/2020/brain-reading-computer-code-1215</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Wowfunhappy</author><text>If you read code and don&amp;#x27;t think about what it&amp;#x27;s doing, are you really &amp;quot;reading&amp;quot; it?&lt;p&gt;Reading code without running it in your head feels like reading prose without actually comprehending it.</text></item><item><author>nextaccountic</author><text>Perhaps reading code activates the same arras as reading prose in English, but &lt;i&gt;running&lt;/i&gt; code in your head activates other areas</text></item><item><author>JonChesterfield</author><text>The paper wasn&amp;#x27;t linked as far as I can tell but is probably &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&amp;#x2F;pmc&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;PMC7738192&amp;#x2F;pdf&amp;#x2F;elife-58906.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&amp;#x2F;pmc&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;PMC7738192&amp;#x2F;pdf&amp;#x2F;eli...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; While the programmers lay in a functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) scanner, the researchers showed them snippets of code and asked them to predict what action the code would produce&lt;p&gt;I have a suspicion that writing code and understanding that written by someone else are different skill sets.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>wongarsu</author><text>You can read (scan) code to get the general gist of it. It&amp;#x27;s more at the level of &amp;quot;this code looks at the pathname, then some cookies, and then either calls the signin function or returns True&amp;quot;. That&amp;#x27;s about the same level where I read most prose. It&amp;#x27;s enough to answer the question &amp;quot;what does this do&amp;quot; (answer: &amp;quot;calls signin if you aren&amp;#x27;t logged in but should be&amp;quot;) or &amp;quot;how complex is this&amp;quot; but not enough to modify the code or understand the intricacies of it.&lt;p&gt;What you are referring to is simulating the execution in my head to figure out which execution flows exist, figuring out which cases aren&amp;#x27;t covered, what the function calls actually do, what the significance of those cookies is, etc. That&amp;#x27;s similar to how I read contracts. But unless I have to write a literary analysis or somebody asks me to find all the plotholes and inconsistencies I don&amp;#x27;t read normal prose that way.&lt;p&gt;It might be interesting if there are similarities between programmers tracing execution flows, lawyers reading an unfamiliar contract, and editors finding inconsistencies in short novels.</text></comment>
<story><title>To the brain, reading computer code is not the same as reading language (2020)</title><url>https://news.mit.edu/2020/brain-reading-computer-code-1215</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Wowfunhappy</author><text>If you read code and don&amp;#x27;t think about what it&amp;#x27;s doing, are you really &amp;quot;reading&amp;quot; it?&lt;p&gt;Reading code without running it in your head feels like reading prose without actually comprehending it.</text></item><item><author>nextaccountic</author><text>Perhaps reading code activates the same arras as reading prose in English, but &lt;i&gt;running&lt;/i&gt; code in your head activates other areas</text></item><item><author>JonChesterfield</author><text>The paper wasn&amp;#x27;t linked as far as I can tell but is probably &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&amp;#x2F;pmc&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;PMC7738192&amp;#x2F;pdf&amp;#x2F;elife-58906.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov&amp;#x2F;pmc&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;PMC7738192&amp;#x2F;pdf&amp;#x2F;eli...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; While the programmers lay in a functional magnetic resonance (fMRI) scanner, the researchers showed them snippets of code and asked them to predict what action the code would produce&lt;p&gt;I have a suspicion that writing code and understanding that written by someone else are different skill sets.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>usrusr</author><text>I&amp;#x27;d put most of my code reading much closer to &amp;quot;inferring intention&amp;quot; than to &amp;quot;running in my head&amp;quot;. It&amp;#x27;s really more like navigating through a complex building, looking for certain rooms than simulating execution. &amp;quot;running in my head&amp;quot; is to reading code like &amp;quot;pronouncing in my head&amp;quot; is to reading prose. Both aren&amp;#x27;t the norm.</text></comment>