"sometimes those compartments don't link up and talk to each other when they really ought to"
I don't think this is a universal bug. I suspect it of being a development/aquired skill issue. Sion and I run into this discussion a lot. Last night we were talking about the way each of our memories work so differently - and exactly HOW different we were to each other. Memory and compartmentalisation must be interelated very strongly. Exactly how must be where the action is.
It may be too easy to say that the way your mind works gives your brilliance you have in your fields of expertise and the way my mind works gives me solid capability in others, but I don't doubt that it's true.
For me, the way I break out of being unable to think laterally when it is critical that I must do (it's my job) is to hold the problem in my mind while exposing myself to a completely different environment. This can be as bizzare as walking round a garden centre while trying to work on a fundraising concept or flipping through a massive office supplies catalogue while thinking about trying to sell mortgages for building societies. You put these two seemingly random things together and suddenly become aware of connections that you didn't think of.
So I would say that as a person I have developed my lateral thinking over many years and am now quite good at it.
However - when I consider what people like you and Sion do for a living, the very idea gives me a headache. I guess that might also be because I haven't spent years training my brain to do it. But I suspect that we all need to have a small natural inclination and interest to develop skills to the point of excellence.
For ages I've been meaning to write a more general discussion of the mental process involved in programming, with regard to the whole issue of many applicants being unable to write programs at interview. But my brain is fried now because I've spent two days tracing backwards in unfamiliar code in search of inconsistencies.
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I don't think this is a universal bug. I suspect it of being a development/aquired skill issue. Sion and I run into this discussion a lot. Last night we were talking about the way each of our memories work so differently - and exactly HOW different we were to each other. Memory and compartmentalisation must be interelated very strongly. Exactly how must be where the action is.
It may be too easy to say that the way your mind works gives your brilliance you have in your fields of expertise and the way my mind works gives me solid capability in others, but I don't doubt that it's true.
For me, the way I break out of being unable to think laterally when it is critical that I must do (it's my job) is to hold the problem in my mind while exposing myself to a completely different environment. This can be as bizzare as walking round a garden centre while trying to work on a fundraising concept or flipping through a massive office supplies catalogue while thinking about trying to sell mortgages for building societies. You put these two seemingly random things together and suddenly become aware of connections that you didn't think of.
So I would say that as a person I have developed my lateral thinking over many years and am now quite good at it.
However - when I consider what people like you and Sion do for a living, the very idea gives me a headache. I guess that might also be because I haven't spent years training my brain to do it. But I suspect that we all need to have a small natural inclination and interest to develop skills to the point of excellence.
For ages I've been meaning to write a more general discussion of the mental process involved in programming, with regard to the whole issue of many applicants being unable to write programs at interview. But my brain is fried now because I've spent two days tracing backwards in unfamiliar code in search of inconsistencies.