After reading up on the technomancer background, I wondered:
How interlinked are a technomancer's different senses?
Could a technomancer read a (printed or hand-written) page of program-code and his brain translates it into what it "means"/describes?
Or is his understanding of code limited to code actually provided through the matrix?
I don't mean by this that a technomancer can just understand any code he reads (making him a walking unbeatable decryption-unit) ....
First, understand that the way a technomancer sees depends on his or her Stream. IMO, most will look at a complex piece of code and intuit its function in the way you suggested - but then, that's exactly what a computer system does anyhow, process code into 'what is meant to be shown'. Some will see the code and comprehend not only how it opens that link, but
why, more in a philosophical sense than anything. Others will see how that link changes the digital surroundings, alters the 'feng shui' of the node that it's in. Others, how people use it, what sort of people, etc. All of this is Stream-dependent.
However, understand that a technomancer
can just understand any code he reads. However, you're confusing 'code' as in 'instructions to a computer' with 'code' as in 'secret writings meant for only a few people'. These are not
necessarily exclusive, but for the purposes of our discussion, they should be treated as such. Encrypted information is encrypted information; a technomancer has to decrypt it just like the rest of us, as it were. But he can read fifty thousand lines of computer commands and 'see' how they work, at least if he puts his mind to it - by his reading, and actively 'loading' the program into the Matrix.
