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Paper is dead, long live paper programming

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Re: Paper is dead, long live paper programming

#61

Post by throwaway7645 »

logfromblammo wrote: post #60
throwaway7645 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd rather have plain text than hand-written diagrams? I think most of the difficulty is in not knowing APL like notation.

Yes, but I have a tool for making images on my computer, too. The handwritten bound notebook cannot be searched, diff'ed, or versioned. It is strictly inferior to the plaintext file in most ways that are in any way relevant to writing software. Its nemesis, of course, is and has always been the mathematical equation, whose notations confound the plaintext writer at every turn. For those, you can write it to an image,…

So searching an image is definitely nice, but it's a tradeoff in my opinion as it takes much longer to write out an equation in equation editor (I'm very proficient btw) or the other mathematical CAD tools I use when compared to a Notebook sketch. I use them all the time, take a pic and put it in OneNote with some keywords to search.

Re: Paper is dead, long live paper programming

#64

Post by throwaway7645 »

darrenf wrote: post #25

In 1992 for my final pre-exams deliverable at uni I wrote the entire program text (in Pascal) out on pen and paper overnight, fuelled by cheap lager and Red Bull. Queued at the door waiting for the lab to open in the morning, then typed the lot in and was delighted to discover not only no syntax errors, but no bugs. Ran it, took a few screenshots, printed them and the listing, delivered it to my tutor and went to the…

Where did Red Bull exist in 92'?

Dang...wikipedia says it came out in 87'. I can't recall energy drinks before ~2003.

Re: Paper is dead, long live paper programming

#65

Post by darrenf »

throwaway7645 wrote: post #64
darrenf wrote: post #25

In 1992 for my final pre-exams deliverable at uni I wrote the entire program text (in Pascal) out on pen and paper overnight, fuelled by cheap lager and Red Bull. Queued at the door waiting for the lab to open in the morning, then typed the lot in and was delighted to discover not only no syntax errors, but no bugs. Ran it, took a few screenshots, printed them and the listing, delivered it to my tutor and went to the…

Where did Red Bull exist in 92'? Dang...wikipedia says it came out in 87'. I can't recall energy drinks before ~2003.

In all honesty I got at least two details wrong, I now realise; it was 1995, and Pro-Plus caffeine tablets.

Re: Paper is dead, long live paper programming

#66

Post by taeric »

Cyph0n wrote: post #47
taeric wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Over time, I got used to catching off-by-one errors in loops as well as assignment to incorrect variables of the same type. But when I write code in an editor, these errors always pop up. I guess it's because the feedback loop is so small, whereas every second counts in a competition environment. Yes, it was pretty fun. I wish I took it more seriously though: we never really practiced much and just attended competiti…

My question is what sorts of shorthands do you develop? In assuming you don't build up the full syntax?

Re: Paper is dead, long live paper programming

#67

Post by bigger_cheese »

I'm an engineer I do something similar despite sitting in front of a computer it's often faster for me to solve simple problems "by hand".

I keep a notebook beside me as I work I end up going through several notebooks a year. I think it's a consequence of how I was taught in school. During high school physics one of the first thing we were taught was to always sketch out a diagram depicting the problem and all the boundary conditions. It is a habit I carried on through university and into my career. I guess the equivalent in programming terms would be to draw a state diagram before attempting to write any code.

Re: Paper is dead, long live paper programming

#69

Post by leighflix »

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…

Was this UIL for computer science by any chance? My team and I have to do the exact same process!

Re: Paper is dead, long live paper programming

#70

Post by pacaro »

throwaway7645 wrote: post #64
darrenf wrote: post #25

In 1992 for my final pre-exams deliverable at uni I wrote the entire program text (in Pascal) out on pen and paper overnight, fuelled by cheap lager and Red Bull. Queued at the door waiting for the lab to open in the morning, then typed the lot in and was delighted to discover not only no syntax errors, but no bugs. Ran it, took a few screenshots, printed them and the listing, delivered it to my tutor and went to the…

Where did Red Bull exist in 92'? Dang...wikipedia says it came out in 87'. I can't recall energy drinks before ~2003.

I remember being surprised when I first regularly visited in 99 that red bull wasn’t well known in the US; it was readily available in the UK at that time.
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