Whenever I learn a new programming language, I know that I’m really assimilating it when I find myself dreaming about it, or “in” it. Lately, I’ve been finding myself dreaming about Go in the same way. It seems odd, and I can’t really explain it because it’s not much like other dreams, linear, obeying causality (as much as dreams usually do) and so on. I see situations of threat and life, and…

Wow, just now as I’m thinking about it to write, I realize that I don’t even remember seeing stones or a board or opponent in my dreams. The game is bare. It’s like I’m seeing the rules directly, without all the material in the way. I notice I don’t remember whole games either, just smaller groups.

Anyway, at least with programming languages, I can dream of imperative statements and how I’d express them in the idiom of whatever language my dreams are obsessing over. A programming language is immaterial, so I don’t find it unusual that I do purely mental or will-based manipulations with the language. With Go, I find I don’t have much control over what I “see.” The game situations are a snapshot in time of a game, and time, an essential element in all of my other dreams, isn’t important at all; the shapes and positions already hold a sort of history of what happened in the game and I don’t remember time elapsing or the situations change. I’m very much passive in the games in my dreams, and it’s a little strange to me.

26 Oct 2003, 09:45 #