Eidetic Memorization vs. Understanding Programming

For my Bachelor’s of Musicology (2013–2016), I took the course Game Programming. We were introduced to C#. I have had some past experience with C++ and Java, but had great difficulty in understanding. And for this course, I still had.

I failed my tests twice. The professor reminded me that I could prepare for them because previous ones were available online, but with different variables and values. The main issue I had, I could describe as not having an overview of how everything connects to each other and so I would get lost.

I do think that has to do with my recall abilities. You could say, I can store a whole lot of information in my short-term memory (I recited 400 digits of π once on national television: here). And it’s because I seem to want to find connections all the time, wanting to grasp (almost in literal sense) that which needs to be understood, that can short-circuit me (or would that be memory overflow?), because it’s just too much. For the Wechsler Test, I scored 17 for Letter–Number Sequencing (19 is the ceiling), which is great, but which might be the reason for losing focus, because I might unnecessarily be using it all the time.

The final test was on its way. I decided to just memorize every single test as best as I could. So the whole code. And it worked. I passed with a B. And interestingly, I could grasp the language more, probably because I sensed a structure that I didn’t see before.

Every so now and then I try to continue learning a programming language. And I think if I just take no more than 30 minutes a day for some time, my mind might get the hang of it.

I have great understanding of music theory, so I could try to understand how I’m absorbing that compared to computer programming without overloading my mind.