The Strange Relationship Between Computer Programs And Their Diagrams

Diagrams are something else, it is crazy how powerful the union of a pencil and a mind can become.

I started with some art paper, pacing up and down the long school halls.

I understood programming instantly, it is just line by line.

I had a Commodore, and it would welcome me, not with a command line, but with a REPL line, how beautiful.

But it still took a pencil, we really can’t learn programming without diagramming.

There are no rules here, though the smaller and more colorful your diagram doodles…

The more beautiful, they will become.

You won’t regret tracing some shape out first, like a portrait, and then make the diagrams turn it into most beautiful art.

Though it takes a computer, you can’t code without a pencil, or some colorful .5mm markers.

Diagrams, will continue surprising you.

Imagine how much easier Memory Palaces are, when you pencil their maps a few times.

How can you not remember the details of your, own works of art.

And if you take the diagrams, to the computer screen.

And dare to translate the drawing process, into code, somehow.

You will discover, that the lines and circles always mean something different.

A line connecting two concepts, rarely means the same thing.

Your diagrams, do not directly translate into code.

In fact they are just receptacles, for unique code snippets, that combine to create your program.

The program diagram, replaces the file pane in your code editor.

When connecting two things, two nodes, with a line, or an edge.

The nodes represent a major step, and the edges, a way to connect them together.

Both lines and edges, hold custom rarely reusable code.

Even though programming is all about imagination, diagrams are more dream-like than code.