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>>dillon+(OP)
I think the title by itself suggests a different question than the article raises.

The idea of the article is that certain visualizations can help think through certain problems. Maybe you can hold these visualizations in your head, or maybe you can't (because your aphantasic, they're too complex, you're tired, whatever), but they're just as available to you on paper or in diagramming tools if you need them. It's trying to start a discussion about what helpful visualizations people turn to in specific problem contexts.

It's separately interesting to hear people try to characterize what they visualize in some generic/universal way, but I think it's causing a lot of people to self-diagnose as aphantasic when it's not indicated. You're not obliged to have some vague generalized visualization going on in your head when programming any more than you would be when speaking, or writing, or playing music. More commonly, one might draw on specific visualizations here and there as they enrich and relate to what you're expressing in your art.

>>swatco+4d3
I do not have aphantasia. Too much phantasia if anything. But I don’t visualize shapes and colors when programming. In fact I find block and arrow diagrams confusing. I visualize the code itself, but zoomed out. It takes on the feel of a house I’ve spent a lot of time in. I know my way around, I know where I left my hat (a function) when I walked in (when I wrote it), which drains clog easily (hairy IO code), which furniture needs dusting (code I haven’t looked at in a while). But to be clear, this is a non-visual metaphor. The visual is the code.

>>sevens+yO4
I think, I am similar. I've discovered source minimaps when they came out first almost 20 years ago. And I loved the sense of spatialness they added to the code .