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As a developer, my most important tools are a pen and a notebook

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Re: As a developer, my most important tools are a pen and a notebook

#141

Post by acuozzo »

rubicon33 wrote: post #132
js4ever wrote: post #5

Calling a notebook the “most important tool” for a dev is pure romanticism. Useful for some, sure, but let's not pretend it outweighs a debugger, version control, or CI. This isn't craftsmanship cosplay, it's software engineering.

This 100%. I was going to write something similar. In my entire 15 years in software engineering, the amount of times I've reached for a notebook pales in comparison to the amount of times I've relied on version control or a debugger. Has a notebook or a whiteboard been handy at times? Of course. But the rubber meets the road behind the IDE, and the tooling there is the story of the day.

> the amount of times I've reached for a notebook pales in comparison

What kind of code do you work on?

I find notebooks useful all the time, but I write in C for embedded systems, so a lot of what I do involves setting up data structures, memory layout, etc.

Re: As a developer, my most important tools are a pen and a notebook

#142

Post by noosphr »

FigurativeVoid wrote: post #124

One of the few things that I miss about working in an office is a large whiteboard and standing in front of it with a colleague. Working on an architecture with a peer and marker really led to some elegant class designs.

I have a 24 inch pen display.

The last time I worked as a CTO I bought them for the whole team. Being able to redraw things on a shared digital white board beats having to redraw the same 4 boxes a dozen times because you keep running out of space.

Also saves people taking photos of the white board before erasing.

Re: As a developer, my most important tools are a pen and a notebook

#143

Post by DawsonBruce »

paganel wrote: post #125
r053bud wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve definitely fixed more bugs with pen/paper than a debugger.

That and taking a shower, doing dishes or taking a walk around the block, in fact I'd say that the ratio of bugs/issues I've solved while away from the computer compared to being in front of the computer is quite high (in favour of the "away from the computer"-fixes, that is).

The balance of rest is an important factor that I’ve understood the value of only later in my career. Pausing on a difficult engineering task at the end of the workday in favor of exercise or cooking dinner (or both) gives my mind and body time to reset it needs. Often answers or alternate approaches will materialize mid curl, crunch, or vegetable chop.

Re: As a developer, my most important tools are a pen and a notebook

#144

Post by Jtsummers »

rubicon33 wrote: post #132
js4ever wrote: post #5

Calling a notebook the “most important tool” for a dev is pure romanticism. Useful for some, sure, but let's not pretend it outweighs a debugger, version control, or CI. This isn't craftsmanship cosplay, it's software engineering.

This 100%. I was going to write something similar. In my entire 15 years in software engineering, the amount of times I've reached for a notebook pales in comparison to the amount of times I've relied on version control or a debugger. Has a notebook or a whiteboard been handy at times? Of course. But the rubber meets the road behind the IDE, and the tooling there is the story of the day.

> the amount of times I've reached for a notebook pales in comparison to the amount of times I've relied on version control or a debugger.

In my now ~35 years of programming, I've found reaching for the notebook often saves me from needing to rely on a debugger unless it's code I inherited and didn't write myself. Even then, though, mapping it out on paper and using my pseudocode-shorthand to describe what the program does and what it intends to do is often faster than dealing with a debugger for anything but trivial bugs.

Re: As a developer, my most important tools are a pen and a notebook

#147

Post by noosphr »

js4ever wrote: post #5

Calling a notebook the “most important tool” for a dev is pure romanticism. Useful for some, sure, but let's not pretend it outweighs a debugger, version control, or CI. This isn't craftsmanship cosplay, it's software engineering.

What you're talking about is software machining, not software engineering.

The difference between the blue collar machinist and the white collar engineer is exactly this view of the machines they use.

For an engineer a machine - be in a slide rule, calculator or super computer - is just a tool. You're not doing engineering because you're using the tool. You're doing engineering because you're thinking and the tool helps you think a bit faster.

For a machinist the machine is the job. You can't make widgets if you don't have a machine to make them on. Thinking about widgets is pointless because they don't get made by thinking.

Re: As a developer, my most important tools are a pen and a notebook

#149

Post by cleak »

ednite wrote: post #118

Great discussion. In my opinion, the real takeaway isn’t about notebooks vs. digital tools, it’s about what shifts your mental gears. Every time we switch modes, it forces our brain to pay attention differently. That fresh context can boost focus, creativity, even recall. For example, I recently stopped coding all the time and picked up a new hobby at night, writing. That simple change gave my brain a reset and actua…

The book Smarter Faster Better introduced me to the concept of disfluency - the idea that extra friction such as awkward fonts, new environments, different tools, etc will pull you out of autopilot mode and force you to think in new ways. I haven’t seen references to it elsewhere, but it’s changed how I approach problems and learning the last 9 years. Switching to a notebook is one great way I use to trigger this as well.
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