The power of thought is strange. I happen to have this ability as well. That's mainly why I'm still employed.
A couple of years ago, we originally had a 4 man team. 3 of those guys left, leaving me (the junior dev) to deal with the whole platform.
I didn't have any time for error, but I didn't know a darn thing. I did, however, had the ability of the "hunch". Basically, when a problem happened, instead of opening the text editor and looking for the problem, I just stood back and thought about it. I'm not sure what I'm thinking about. Its strange. Its like my brain just traverses through the infrastructure and comes up with the LOGICAL solution. Once I get that answer, I then go look at the code base. 99% of the time, its my hunch that finds the problem.
I amaze myself all the times with this. To me its just logic, but I'm sure its something more. I'll probably never figure it out, but that's not to my detriment.
This also helps with writing new applications, because you already know what will work and what won't before you get there. Its, craziness!!
Me too. I used to really get frustrated when others couldn't see what I thought were obvious answers looking at a situation. Now I've come to sincerely believe there's something strange in me that allows me to see these things because when I've tried to take the Socratic method to get others to see what I see in various situations, I realize there are a lot of people who actually can't. Some people can get it via experience, but I've been able to do the same thing in areas or situations where I have zero experience (and now I'm talking about life, not just technical stuff).
I don't want to get on a high horse and say I have superpowers or something like that. But for some reason I'm able to do something that others can't, even though I think it's simply simple logic. It's sometimes a scary thing, because when I'm wrong, I have a difficult time figuring out why I'm wrong if someone else isn't able to do the same thing and "see" ahead.
Sometimes it seems to me that "seeing" is a better word than "thinking" here, because for the simpler things, it's not like I try to use brain cycles on the issues at hand.
And I hate saying this stuff, because it makes me sound arrogant when I know that I'm really incompetent at so many things.
It's sad to say, but the majority of people cannot follow a logical progression more than a two or three steps. It's not even an issue of "smart" vs "dumb", as many of my quite clever coworkers have this issue. It seems to me to be predicated on the ability to keep a lot of state in your head. If in order to reach an answer you need to synthesize the results of two logical conclusions and you can't keep the first result in your head while you work on the second, you're going to get lost.
> It seems to me to be predicated on the ability to keep a lot of state in your head.
There's some research and discussion among educators and neuroscientists about how working memory may be more important than IQ. IANAE but my anecdotal experience also supports this.
I think a lot of engineers get to this point through different methods.
For me when I was new engineer (no CS background) I'd never spend too much time on a bug before I got frustrated and would head over to a more senior engineer's cube for advice. Usually during the walk over while I tried to properly form the exact question to ask I'd figure out the answer. Dan (my go to guy for this) got used to seeing me head his way then just say hi, he'd ask "Figured it out?" and I'd say "Yep" and head back to my desk.
I amaze myself all the times with this. To me its just logic, but I'm sure its something more. I'll probably never figure it out, but that's not to my detriment.
I vaguely recall a story that my grandfather used to be very good at doing math in his head, and actually lost this skill when he tried to understand his own thought process well enough to explain it to others...
A couple of years ago, we originally had a 4 man team. 3 of those guys left, leaving me (the junior dev) to deal with the whole platform.
I didn't have any time for error, but I didn't know a darn thing. I did, however, had the ability of the "hunch". Basically, when a problem happened, instead of opening the text editor and looking for the problem, I just stood back and thought about it. I'm not sure what I'm thinking about. Its strange. Its like my brain just traverses through the infrastructure and comes up with the LOGICAL solution. Once I get that answer, I then go look at the code base. 99% of the time, its my hunch that finds the problem.
I amaze myself all the times with this. To me its just logic, but I'm sure its something more. I'll probably never figure it out, but that's not to my detriment.
This also helps with writing new applications, because you already know what will work and what won't before you get there. Its, craziness!!