[genmon]

The reason I ask: there's a story about a physicist who was so kinaesthetic in his thinking that somebody walked into his office to find him rolling around on the floor, trying to embody rotations from the point of view of a particular system or something...

I can't say that my own subjective feelings while coding are so useful! But I like to imagine that they're a meaningful contributor to my "taste" of what good/bad looks like

(Wish I could track down the reference)

[JohnFen]

I certainly don't get as deep as that physicist, but I do think I understand. When I'm working out a difficult logical/data/programmatic problem, then I use my hands in a similar way. I'll form hand shapes that in my mind represent geometric shapes and physically use my hands to "arrange" them in various ways until something "clicks" in my head. That "click" isn't the win of finding a solution, but more like a feeling that I have now grasped the true essence of the problem.

[skydhash]

Essence of the problem is the right word. If we go with F. Brooks’ words, it’s like all the accidental complexity fade away and all that’s left is the idealistic view of how things should work. Then all that left is making it happens with code