I used to do this regularly when I first started coding, I called them "Codemares". They were like nightmares with the shouting of commands I didn't quite understand would invade my dreams.

It seems to me that this is the purpose of nightmares. I especially noticed this after having kids. They are not by default scared of snakes and such but if they see a nature documentary of a snake biting something or even a cartoon bad guy, it's enough to trigger bad dreams which reinforce the fear and it's far stronger the next day.

IMO this is under-appreciated in current AI models. RL is not very effective in avoiding crocodiles for example, by the time like 5 of your tribe-mates are eaten it's far too late. You need some mechanism that ensures the danger is learned after just a single incident.

Is this the user-friendly name for what is happening?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetris_effect

When I was learning C, I woke screaming. An ominous dark figure had been standing on the foot of my bed. I somehow knew it’s name was ”struct”.