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Paper is dead, long live paper programming

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Re: Paper is dead, long live paper programming

#31

Post by taeric »

Cyph0n wrote: post #15

I participated in a few programming competitions in college where paper programming is a must. There are typically 3 members on each team but only one computer. Our strategy involved first finding the easiest problem in the set and handing it over to our fastest typer to solve. In parallel, the other 2 members ranked and categorized (graph search, DP, arithmetic, etc.) the remaining problems. We then proceeded to spl…

I'm highly interested to know what class of "common mistakes" you are referring to here. This sounds like a very fun environment/method to do things.

Re: Paper is dead, long live paper programming

#32

Post by abhgh »

My school had a two year course on programming in C\C++; fairly basic, being an introduction to programming itself. At that time, I didn't own a computer, and to use the computers in the lab you needed to wait an extra hour and arrange for your own transportation (the normal hours had buses). You could also use some time off your lunch breaks, but that wasn't clearly enough for trial and error. So I got into the habit of writing programs on paper first, walking through them with arbitrary values assigned to variables, and entering it during my lunch break, hoping for a very small number of errors which I could hopefully fix on the spot.

I think that practice heavily and positively influenced how I code and read other people's codes.

Re: Paper is dead, long live paper programming

#35

Post by tluyben2 »

That handwriting is lovely; mine is unreadable, but indeed the older I get, the more I program on paper. And it pays off; less bugs and generally better results in my field. The break shit mentality never worked but it definitely does not work in embedded. You lose a lot of time and probably prototypes (actual money) if you work like that. Writing things out and testing them in your head with maybe some level of formal proofs on paper (they do not have to be complete, just a lot of deep thinking) really saves us time and money.

Re: Paper is dead, long live paper programming

#36

Post by logfromblammo »

This is the sort of thing I write into "notes.txt" and check in to source control as a support document.

Writing your notes in a bound notebook as un-OCR-able calligraphy, and then scanning the results to image files is not likely to endear you to me as a co-worker.

Re: Paper is dead, long live paper programming

#38

Post by 0xVi »

scarmig wrote: post #26
tincholio wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's some Spencerian variation, indeed. I can't fathom why he uses that paper format... Those pages are annoyingly narrow! Also, I agree with you, Spencerian (or any other ornate script) is not the best for coding notes.

Which script would be best, in your opinion?

I do all my coding in gregg shorthand

Re: Paper is dead, long live paper programming

#39

Post by jonnybgood »

scarmig wrote: post #26
tincholio wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's some Spencerian variation, indeed. I can't fathom why he uses that paper format... Those pages are annoyingly narrow! Also, I agree with you, Spencerian (or any other ornate script) is not the best for coding notes.

Which script would be best, in your opinion?

If you’re going to use a script, abbreviated Spencerian would be better. It’s more simple and legible.

Re: Paper is dead, long live paper programming

#40

Post by tachyoff »

0xVi wrote: post #38
scarmig wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which script would be best, in your opinion?

I do all my coding in gregg shorthand

I know this was a joke, but do you by any chance know any shorthand? I tried to teach myself Gregg here and there years ago, but it requires more dedication than I was willing to put in to become fluent.
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