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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

#131

Post by justinrubek »

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…

That model has been out for something like a week, and it's already the most important tool? That's a very interesting take to me. I tried it, and it found Claude 4 particularly unusable personally, 3.7 seems better.

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

#132

Post by rubicon33 »

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.

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

#133

Post by hk1337 »

bufferoverflow wrote: post #2

I don't understand the pen/physical notebook thing. It's slow to write, insanely slow to search what you've written, almost impossible to copy or share.

> slow to write

that's probably the most important thing. it forces you to slow down and think it through and actually absorb it.

Searching what I have written in the past would be useless for me because it wouldn't necessarily make sense. It's more about the physically writing it out.

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

#135

Post by regus »

I have tried multiple times to make notebooks work for me for note taking or tracking tasks but it always falls apart eventually. First it was bullet journals, then I tried something a little less structured but in the end I couldn’t get it to stick. Now I use Apple Notes which is good enough.

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

#136

Post by hk1337 »

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'…

> They use printer paper and pen. When they're done, they throw the paper away.

That's the most important takeaway from using pen(cil) and paper. If you can make it reusable for you great but the most important thing is physically writing it down.

I rarely, if ever, keep anything I have written down in the notebook. Eventually, I rip it out and shred it.

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

#137

Post by growthwtf »

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"

And funny enough, saying that to a group of tradespeople and GCs would elicit essentially the same discussion as this is!

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

#138

Post by hooverd »

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.

I thought engineers frequently used notebooks? I guess if an electrical engineer ever sketched anything in a notebook, they're just pretending.

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

#139

Post by barrenko »

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.

Whiteboard (blackboard etc.) is life.

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

#140

Post by ge96 »

Most jobs I've had I use a macbook and I take daily notes in the Apple Notes app

Ex:

W22 D111 Wed May 28, 2025 (7)

The (7) means hours since I'm a contractor and I do walks/subtracts time that I fill in with PTO

I will probably get a remarkable 2 again at some point, it seems redundant if you have a tablet like device (I have a Surface Book 3) but that is rarely used funny. I used to use an RM2 a lot but had to sell it when I needed cash. It's cool that it's programmable.

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