:weird:

I have an in-circuit emulator with a huge trace buffer. My program was unexpectedly jumping outside of the actual programmed area on the microcontroller, and I was attempting to figure out why.

:weird:

basically he was tracing his program and noticed that it was trying to execute code outside the expected area
apparently something to do with an interrupt (breakpoint?) messing with the program counter (stores the address of the next thing to execute)

but thats besides the point
he was just using an experience to portray the age old observation that saying things aloud and/or trying to explain things aloud often helps to bring clarity in thought

anyways i dont usually hold conversations with myself aloud for the sole reason that im lazy and would rather hold a conversation in my head than bother my jaw muscles and my vocal chords
the same goes for thinking things aloud.. for most things i can usually just focus on single question/statements at a time.. and "talk" in my head
for something a little bit challenging i might start mumbling/noises or saying random words just to distract myself
last resort would be to start talking

Sometimes, when im very bored I speak to myslef in my mind but not out loud.

No, interrupt. Your PC has 16 of them, this particular processor has one. Perhaps the term is more familiar as IRQ, that thing you used to have to set for all your hardware; IRQ is the setting for which interrupt occurs when the hardware device needs attention.

Anycase, I don't think it's so much vocalizing your thought that clarifies it as trying to explain it as if to someone not immediately familiar with the problem you're trying to solve.

ahhh, my head hurts now ^_^

just out of curiousity but what processor was this for?
sounds like you were doing some hardcore embedded development

i totally agree with you on the "explaining to others" as it forces you to connect and rationalize it in simpler and/or detailed terms
but i also think that vocalizing it allows you to hear aloud what you are saying and that this is a very key reason for why saying things aloud helps.. similar to how writing things down is supposed to help you to understand and remember them better
somehow it helps when the thought/idea that you are dealing with interacts with other parts of your brain going through the part of your brain that processes audio and visual input and even your motor skills
i do remember some interesting scientific research investigating and supporting this idea.. ill try to dig it up

w33333!!!

This is for the Microchip PIC16F73 proccessor.

What happenned to my beautiful beautiful thread? We do not agree. We spit on you. *Kapew!* x 2

for some strange reason that outburst gave me an incredibly grotesque image of gollum screaming that same outburst while ejaculating

I make snide comments to myself but I don't have conversations with myself.

Your missing out.

No he's not. This is RoboticSilence we're talking about, here.