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Paper is dead, long live paper programming

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Re: Paper is dead, long live paper programming

#71

Post by keithnz »

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…

exact same year, in pascal also, I did the same thing for an assignment implementing an embedded multitasking mini OS. I was so exicited at the idea of making my own multitasking system I went home and coded it all on paper. Went in to the lab the next day, coded it in, and it worked straight away with only a few minor issues.

Re: Paper is dead, long live paper programming

#72

Post by devxpy »

I shit you not, but in India, at our university, we are not allowed to write code on the PC unless we present the code, pseudo code and flowchart first. Same story for the CAD subject. (Cs majors have to study that)

I find this very absurd as a programmer who's written code directly on the PC since like forever.

Re: Paper is dead, long live paper programming

#73

Post by sheepmullet »

logfromblammo wrote: post #36

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.

In practice I've found it takes ten times as long writing in a way co-workers can understand as it does writing personal notes.

As such I'll mostly write personal notes for my own reference and make a judgement call about where I put in the 10x effort to communicate to co-workers.

Your approach seems to couple problem solving with communicating with co-workers. Sometimes that's an advantage - often not.

Re: Paper is dead, long live paper programming

#76

Post by Retra »

throwaway7645 wrote: post #61
logfromblammo wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Learn LaTeX and stop wasting your time with equation editors.

Re: Paper is dead, long live paper programming

#77

Post by MaulingMonkey »

throwaway7645 wrote: post #57
logfromblammo wrote: post #36

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.

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

With a paint program I can color code. With ASCII diagrams I can actually draw a straight line. With paper I can have eraser marks everywhere.

(But I do use paper some - focus reasons, and easier to manage than terrible phone interfaces.)

Re: Paper is dead, long live paper programming

#80

Post by craigds »

yepguy wrote: post #51
andrewjrangel wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except I literally cannot read it

Did you not learn cursive in grade school? This looks exceptionally readable to me, and other than the capital letters it doesn't really have any flourishes. And given how practiced his hand looks, I wouldn't be surprised if he was able to write this much quicker in cursive than I could write it in printed letters.

I learned cursive too, but it's still much slower to read than plain old 'normal' lettering. I assume the author would be able to read it just fine. It is gorgeous though.
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