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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

#171

Post by gjadi »

cleak wrote: post #149
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…

Interesting. I noticed the same and sometimes I change my emacs theme just to get a fresh perspective. Sometimes I also disable syntax highlighting when typing so I won't get distracted.

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

#172

Post by directevolve »

uludag wrote: post #123

I must say, without hesitation and doubt, that Claud 4 is my most important tool. I literally feel like I have the intelligence of the entire human race at my fingertips, giddily awaiting a caress from the tips of my fingertips. I honestly could not imagine my developer life without the twain of Opus and Sonnet. Not my opinion of course, I just thought I'd include it as I found it surprisingly missing from the commen…

You definitely don’t have the intelligence of the entire human race on Claude. You have a generative model of most of the published, digitized text the human race has produced. I’m happy to call it intelligent, and, as a daily user of the most recent pro LLM models, extremely useful for tasks like coding and, to some extent, search.

But as soon as I turn from implementing and debugging code to conceptual thinking or building a mental mode of a problem domain, LLMs currently function for me mainly as Grammarly on steroids. There’s no one tool in this space that’s supreme - Zotero, DuckDuckGo, Google Scholar, pen and paper, draw.io, and Google Docs all play a role. I’m a PhD student, YMMV, the LLMs do improve over time, etc.

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

#173

Post by atrettel »

sky2224 wrote: post #25

Some of the most intelligent people I've ever met in math, physics, and computer science don't even use a notebook. They use printer paper and pen. When they're done, they throw the paper away. I have seldom found personal notes from far in the past to be useful. If there's something worth noting down, then it goes into documentation, so others can stumble upon whatever quirk I've come across in the future. If there'…

I've used printer paper myself in different jobs in science. I personally don't like it but I have done it when it was the only paper available. Budgets in scientific organizations are often very tight, so often nothing else is provided, and many times you do not have the direct authority to order anything yourself.

My point is that I'd view this behavior more as a consequence of the circumstances many scientists find themselves in rather than a conscious choice, though I do admit that some people may like it more than I do.

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

#174

Post by angrysaki »

dwringer wrote: post #122
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 feels like saying "when building a house, obviously a hammer is more important than the blueprints. This isn't art class, it's construction"

Wouldn't it be:

"when building a house, obviously a hammer is more important than the _paper_ blueprints. This isn't art class, it's construction".

(when digital notes/digital blueprints are an available option)

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

#176

Post by agarren »

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…

Out of curiosity, what kind of writing? Journaling and getting your thoughts out, or fiction, something else?

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

#178

Post by thecrumb »

After scribbling down notes in paper notebooks for years I finally decided I didn't want to kill any more trees to take notes I seldom referenced.

Now I have a digital tablet (Supernote) on which I scribble down all the meaningless stuff throughout the day. Then I review that and anything useful or important goes into Obsidian where I can tag/search it later.

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

#180

Post by ujkhsjkdhf234 »

thecrumb wrote: post #178

After scribbling down notes in paper notebooks for years I finally decided I didn't want to kill any more trees to take notes I seldom referenced. Now I have a digital tablet (Supernote) on which I scribble down all the meaningless stuff throughout the day. Then I review that and anything useful or important goes into Obsidian where I can tag/search it later.

On the scale of the amount of harm you personally do to the planet on a daily basis, I have to imagine wasting paper is one of the least consequential things.
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