Dreaming in Code

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May 3, 2015 at 3:20pm
closed account (2LzbRXSz)
I know everyone dreams about stuff going on in their life. I rarely dream, but last night I had these extremely vivid dreams about programming. It was such a weird feeling.

I could actually feel myself working out the problems in my brain! It was amazing. I kept waking up in the middle of the night, confused because I had the answer to code I was debugging, but the code was all a dream and I had now come up with the solution for no reason. I think at one point I even woke up talking in my sleep about what I was programming.

Do any of you guys have similar experiences? I'm sure everyone has, but I mean to the point where you wake up disappointed that everything you were working so hard on was just an illusion?
May 3, 2015 at 4:44pm
When I go to bed pondering a programming problem the same things happens to me!

Last night I was thinking about how I was going to implement the event manager for my battle system without registering the manager, gui, and gui objects on the same event types. Woke up with a pretty intricate solution neatly packaged for my sunday self. Dream me is a real bro.

It would be awfully nice if those changes would just implement themselves... :D
May 3, 2015 at 5:42pm
closed account (2LzbRXSz)
I love when that happens! Except, I typically come up with the perfect solution right before I fall asleep... So I have to get up out of bed to write my idea down, then try to decode what I wrote half asleep the next day.

If only dream me could stream those ideas into real me's code...
May 3, 2015 at 8:24pm
I've actually been told I recite numbers and words (most likely variables) in my sleep. I've yet to recollect a dream like that though unfortunately. ;/

I don't think I've ever solved a problem in my sleep though.
Last edited on May 3, 2015 at 8:25pm
May 3, 2015 at 9:00pm
closed account (2LzbRXSz)
I wonder if what you recite in your sleep would make sense (or have a pattern) if someone took the time to watch you sleep, and write everything you said down.
May 6, 2015 at 9:05pm
I don't think I've dreamed of programming, but I've definitely had similar experiences.
For example, after studying very hard that night for a math exam (or doing homework), before I woke up I had a fuzzy dream of being haunted and frustrated at not being able to solve some mathematics problem. My brain was probably practicing very difficult example problems to help prepare me for the next day ;)

Also, about talking in sleep: There are smartphone apps that will record what you say in your sleep (it turns on and starts recording if it hears an above-noise-level sound.
Last edited on May 6, 2015 at 9:07pm
May 6, 2015 at 9:22pm
closed account (2LzbRXSz)
That's pretty cool!

The app sounds neat too - I wouldn't be able to use it though since I sleep with the TV on. It would just pick up all of those noises instead (unless the TV is at a low enough volume to be considered just noise. I don't keep it too loud.
May 7, 2015 at 4:58pm
I've actually used one of those apps before because I was just curious. I too have the TV on at night and it didn't record the TV. I keep it really quiet though, just enough so it's not dead quiet in the room.
May 7, 2015 at 5:04pm
closed account (2LzbRXSz)
I'm the same way.

Oh, but I run the air condition at this time of year. It's kind of noisey, but I think the app would probably ignore it.

Does it still work if your phone goes into sleep mode, or do you just disable sleep mode, leave it open and let the app work it's magic?
May 9, 2015 at 1:45pm
Have you considered the possibility that it was not a dream? Here is how that could work. Your body falls asleep and your subconscious 'astral self' peeled out of your flesh and started coding on your astral computer. In the A.M. you returned to your body and chalked it off as a cool, vivid dream.
May 9, 2015 at 2:23pm
closed account (2LzbRXSz)
Can I Google Drive those files over from my astral computer?
Last edited on May 9, 2015 at 2:26pm
May 9, 2015 at 3:50pm
God I hope not. If technology like that existed, employers would make people start working in their sleep!!
May 9, 2015 at 4:04pm
closed account (2LzbRXSz)
Good point, but some of my most important programming happens in my sleep!
May 9, 2015 at 4:35pm
Well it is not entirely a waste. Let the dream be your inspiration and maybe you can rebuild it in real life.

Dreams are really cool if you can learn to play around with them. Just last week I had my first lucid dream. Now that is better than any virtual reality machine I tell you!
May 9, 2015 at 5:22pm
closed account (2LzbRXSz)
I actually had a "hippie" phase. Studying dreams was one of the things I was most interested in. I kind of grew out of it, and don't pay much attention to what I dream now unless it's stuff like this - which even then I don't really analyze I just praise it as "cool".

What was your lucid dream like?
May 14, 2015 at 4:32pm
Nothing major really. I was actually trying to astral project myself. Then started having a typical dream that I could not control. All of a sudden things became very vivid and I was floating above my body fully conscious. I was extremely excited thinking I had just projected. So I started to have a look around and things did not seem right. I think they call this a reality check. I new at this moment that I was still dreaming, but fully conscious just the same. By far, this was not a disappointing experience, even if I did not truly project. It did not last long and soon after I woke up again.
May 14, 2015 at 9:37pm
I have dreamt of programming some time ago... I remember being able to write some of it down afterwards, I ended up developing it. It was a nice idea too. It was something about script embedding.
May 15, 2015 at 12:39pm
closed account (2LzbRXSz)
@Manga That sounds pretty intense, and very very cool. Keep me updated on the dream stuff, and good luck with it!


@S G H Most of the dreams I've had I can't really tell what I'm working on, it's just random bits of code. Sometimes, it relates to what I'm working on. Other times it's just some crazy beautiful, impossibly efficient code that I forget half of when I wake up.

Though there was one time I had a dream that I was in a "coding contest" to see who could program the end of the world the fastest. I was isolated on a laptop for like 4 months and 50 other people were all working towards the same goal... I never did get to see the end of that dream lol.
May 15, 2015 at 2:46pm
Well I think dreaming of coding would seem cool. Now how exactly does someone program the end of the world?
Also I apologize for derailing earlier.
May 15, 2015 at 5:16pm
closed account (2LzbRXSz)
I think it was a virtual reality situation, where the world was digital, but there was no "real world"

Oh no worries I didn't mind.
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