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

hamatti.org

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

#151

Post by danadam »

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: post #98
wiz21c wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A debugger doesn't show you the evolution of your program over time. A few well placed prints give you that. I use my debugger often, but sometimes you need to track the value of something over time (say, over 1000 iterations) and a debugger can't show you that. So prints are still relevant. Debugger are more for "needle-in-haystack" stuff I think. A debugger that could record the execution over time (and query that…

> I know there are some Do you mind providing examples? I’m not sure what I would search to find that and I’m interested in the idea.

I've never used it but sounds like https://rr-project.org/

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

#152

Post by butterlettuce »

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.

Apollo 13 crew was saved by duct tape, yet it’s still rocket science.

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

#153

Post by sawaali »

I have thought through tough problems using pen and paper. Have tried a lot of iterations of digital notebooks, but lost the fluidity and malleability of paper.

These days I have found the iPad + Pencil with an infinite canvas to be the best fit. I use Ahmni (https://www.ahmni.app/) which is a delight.

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

#154

Post by runjake »

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.

Think of it this way: The brain outweighs those tools (for now). The notebook is an extension of thought and the brain.

Some of us who grew up in the 1970s and 1980s even used to "program" by handwriting code on paper as kind of a rough draft.

I did this particularly for systems I didn't have at home, like the Apple ][. I'd handwrite programs at home, then take it to school and type it into an Apple ][. This was somewhat common.

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

#155

Post by verzali »

martindbp wrote: post #71
mosselman wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for pointing this out. In the same vein there are so many posts about productivity systems where people put endless amount of time into crafting their gtd notebooks with tabs and lists, etc. All that time spent to be productive instead of actually being productive. Or people describing their ideal Obsidian work flows instead of actually noting anything useful down in it. People writing about how they built the…

You see this everywhere. In sports its the people who spend most of their time worrying about their equipment instead of just playing the game. I was there with learning Chinese as well, spent way more time thinking about tools than actually learning the language.

The people wearing the shiny new running shoes at the start of the race rarely finish anywhere close to the front.

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

#156

Post by noosphr »

Hamatti wrote: post #109
kstenerud wrote: post #83

Most comments are focusing on the physical pen and paper aspect of this post, but are missing the underlying principle: The author uses pen and paper because when they sit down at a computer they end up shifting to "function mode" where they're implementing rather than designing. That's it. The important takeaway is to make sure you don't fall into the trap of implementing when you should be designing. How you mainta…

OP here. Exactly! So happy to read you managed to pick up the core gist of the story. It's important to find the tools that work best for YOU. I partially wanted to write this because I've often felt as an outsider in tech teams where everyone sits at a computer 7.5 hours every day and I'm the one thinking better when I'm away from the screen and keyboard. So I wanted to offer an example to those who are like me and…

I used computers for a lot longer than 7.5 hours a day. Doubly so since I got a home desktop with a tablet display and 3 other screens. I find that the reason why productivity in offices is so low is that:

1). The available screen real estate for doing work is tiny.

2). The tools people use have happy paths that force you to work a specific way.

3). Deep thinking is impossible with interruptions.

As an example of a tool which works best on computers, I've finally recreated the literate environment I used at a previous job on my own time and from scratch: https://olive-alayne-28.tiiny.site/

I can now work happily with Emacs in an environment that supports deep thinking about code instead of fighting with it every step of the way.

If you're interested [1] and [3] from that paper are great introductions to literate programming and noweb + emacs + synctex is by far the most pleasant IDE I've ever used.

I also can't rave enough about how well pen tablets work with xournalpp these days. I can take notes on top of multi-thousand page printouts of code bases and rearrange, doodle, remix, and add new pages wherever I feel like. Even five years ago there was no tool that would let you do that without the threat of a major crash is you wrote too fast.

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

#157

Post by WalterBright »

guappa wrote: post #61
WalterBright wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to get the most out of a physics lecture, leave the laptop at home. Instead, bring a spiral notebook and some colored pens. Write everything down the prof writes on the blackboard. It's remarkable how much of the lecture you'll remember. And when you read your handwritten notes, you'll remember the lecture that went with it.

Yeah good luck writing with coloured pens at the speed teachers speak.

I managed it for 4 years in college, with usually 3 hours of lecture per day. Was it work? Sure. One was busy the whole lecture. But the results were clear.

My favorite pens at the time were the Pilot pens. Today I love the Tul pens.

I have long since scanned them all in. I should post them on my website, just for fun.

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

#158

Post by ednite »

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…

Thanks for sharing. I just added Smarter Faster Better to my reading list, along with Annie Murphy Paul’s The Extended Mind.

Both seem to explore how breaking out of autopilot can unlock better thinking, which is exactly what I’ve been noticing in my own routines.

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

#159

Post by WalterBright »

aragilar wrote: post #106
guappa wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah good luck writing with coloured pens at the speed teachers speak.

Why are you focusing on what they are saying, rather than what they are writing (there's an important distinction)?

I would copy what they were writing. The professors had 9 blackboards available, and they'd use them all during a 55 minute lecture, and then some. Some would write with their left hand while erasing with the right (!). It was a heluva time for me. Never before or since have I learned so much so fast. Blink and I fell behind.

In retrospect, I sorely wished I had set up a cassette recorder and recorded all the audio. It would be a gold mine today, as all those lectures are lost to time.

On the other hand, I had no money to buy cassette tapes at the time.

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

#160

Post by directevolve »

MonkeyClub wrote: post #53
onion2k wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The literal argument here is fine - using a notebook is antiquated and we have better tools. But the sentiment holds true. When you're building software designing good code is the most fundamentally important aspect of your job. All the tools you mention are things that enable you to delivery that code, but if the design of the code itself is wrong then they mean very little. The process of designing code feels like…

> using a notebook is antiquated and we have better tools Although I would agree that we have more modern tools, I'm not sure they're better along every dimension: pen and paper is better for memory retention than typing. Also, while YMMV, oen and paper works wonders for brainstorming for me. Though admittedly search is easier with digital tools.

For fast, physically intuitive, flow-of-thought expression, there’s nothing like pen and paper, for me.

I throw away almost all my handwritten notes, because of the downsides: illegibility, unsearchability, physical bulk.

But the qualitative difference of thinking or reading +/- handwriting is huge. I don’t get caught up in editing. I can draw diagrams easily. It slows me down, makes me dwell on an idea while I’m writing it, and thereby physically calibrates my thought process.

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