Yes, using the language in real life situations does work. I end up with a pronunciation that I think approximates those from whom I learn\ -- because I'm not working from a visual representation of the letters. That can get me in trouble: it sounds to the native speaker that I am such, and then I will be lost really fast.

As for programming structures: bad structures feel bad to me. I can feel the collision or the missing parts. That sometimes leads me to recreate that's already known. A friend (from the FORTH interest group) took a look at what I had created in USCD Pascal and said, "oh, you created a keyed ISAM database." I had never heard of same (in 1984).

>>I would love to read it. I would have loved to learn German -- but being aphantasiac (search it) means I never had a chance. I tried.
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>>As I saw it, Gore would have been a "does less harm" president. Oh well.
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>We over here have a choice of several parties that we elect into Bundestag. The choice is Scylla or Charybdis. And if you do not vote, the total goes done, abstention while voting on will be magically counted. The only way to say no is to paint the ballot, this is neither a vote nor abstention and your vote will go to nobody, it will effectively reduce everybody's count.
>And then we get those coalition governments. Horse-trading all days long.
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>I will not imagine how a two-sides-of-the-same-coin election will work. (From outside, there is only marginal difference)
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>Aphantasia? Sounds odd, because I run a lot on creating internal images, in special to leave depressions. But then, it's like colour - you can not imagine what you do not see. I only get litte red visible, I can not imagine how it would be otherwise. Red is no signal to me, not the least. I prefer orange or yellow.
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>So, how does this block you from learning foreign languages? It looks like the common school approach might be useless, but the "use a native speaker, point and repeat" approach should work - you learned English this way? Anyway, being fluent in a foreign language to go for novels needs a very long time - or flooding. The kids are fluent to English by just watching Youtube and taking the risk to read stuff. School set up a base, but most is self educated this way.
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>It would totally block me reading novels, I run that deep in my internal pictures that I reject to see a moving picture that derives from a novel - or don't read the novel if I saw the film first. And since I'm a lousy reader, I skip the usual description of the character and build my own version. You know, don't do this with R.A.Heinlein.
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>And for programming, I visualize structures, somehow. How does that work?