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What does one do when their handwriting gets worse and worse as the years go on due to constant keyboard use? Is there any way to get it back?
Most notably - https://joshldavis.com/2013/05/20/the-path-to-dijkstras-hand...
Discussed - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20791049
What does one do when their handwriting gets worse and worse as the years go on due to constant keyboard use? Is there any way to get it back?
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I'm sure it's very personal :) Because everyone has their own reality, workflow and reading a piece either resonates or dissonates with you (personally). I personally find paper&pen both comforting and unsettling at the same time. Soothing because writing really helps sort out thoughts etc. Mindflow is different from flow "on the computer/phone/tablet". On the other hand, it's distracting because without an index sys…
On the other hand, it's distracting because without an index system (I start each notebook with two blank pages trying to index the contents; every other page has a number) it's easy to get lost. I use a smart pen that writes in a notebook, but also stores everything I write in memory. Every month or so I export the content of the pen to my computer via Bluetooth as OCRed PDFs. This is because my boss often asks me t…
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I dont know, sounds more like a design issue to me, if your app requires this amount of information to get debugged properly.
Really? Just try debugging a Dijkstra like algorithm and then talk about design issues.
That's not to say I don't also use debuggers when necessary, I just reserve those for very hairy problems that can't be solved any other way, e.g. stepping into dependencies. Let's not forget that debuggers have their limitations too, e.g. release build GC optimization (or indeed any release-only bug), and any init process where you have to attach the debugger after the startup, fundamentally cannot be debugged using debuggers.
Yes A4 is quite big but has good advantages for inserting loose papers and the A4 real estate is a great size for user interface design.
Pen and paper are great because it forces you to think and design without going into too much details and being distracted.
I find myself alternating between 2 modals: pen and paper vs. use Sublime Text to just write down some thoughts. Either seems to work well.
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'…
The sciencey side of this is that writing stuff down boosts memory, retention and learning, even if you immediately throw away what you wrote. Here's one of the hundreds of articles about this, it's a very well documented phenomenon https://www.newscientist.com/article/2414241-writing-things-... Writing by hand also has a greater effect than typing because it engages more of the senses and more of the brain, in parti…
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I wonder how many developers today were forced to take an introductory drafting class. I know a lot of us played with Lego. The problem of describing a 3 dimensional object in two dimensions requires extra projections to describe the thing. A 3d object in 2 dimensions takes three drawings to mostly describe. If the object is more complex than three dimensions, you need to look at it from a lot more angles.
Wow, decades in this field and it finally took your comment to connect my childhood LEGO obsession with coding. Simple enough, but it never actually crossed my mind. The funny thing is, I’ve always linked my love for storytelling to LEGO building, but not coding. Thanks for the insight, that just snapped into place.
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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 he…
That’s funny, because if you go into any machine shop you’ll find machinists writing things down in notebooks (and probably cursing engineers who never set foot in the shop).