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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

#281

Post by aragilar »

WalterBright wrote: post #159
aragilar wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

Sorry, I was replying to guappa suggesting that they were focusing on the wrong thing.

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

#282

Post by fuzztester »

atrettel wrote: post #169
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…

This is one of the reasons that I actually take notes in three different media: paper notebooks, an old-school digital voice recorder, and in text files. Different media have different advantages and disadvantages and represent different ideas for more readily. I have used the voice recorder less over the years but I find it optimal when time is limited and I have to move onto something else. Part of using a voice re…

What recorder make and model do you use?

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

#283

Post by noosphr »

alfiedotwtf wrote: post #273
noosphr wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> I bought them for the whole team I have to say, that's pretty damn cool! I'm such a fan of diagramming code and systems, so having this for everyone on the team I'm guessing would have done wonders! I now have a A2 paper notebook (I think it's actually supposed to be used as an artist's sketchbook) permanently next to my keyboard (my mouse sits on it) and I can't imagine living without it now... but a 24" pen displ…

https://www.xp-pen.com/product/artist-pro-24-gen-2-4k.html

4k and quite affordable. And it's a real screen the rest of the time.

Like I said the main quality of life improvement has been xournalpp. Development in the last year has taken off and it's one of the most pleasant projects to contribute to.

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

#284

Post by atrettel »

fuzztester wrote: post #282
atrettel wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one of the reasons that I actually take notes in three different media: paper notebooks, an old-school digital voice recorder, and in text files. Different media have different advantages and disadvantages and represent different ideas for more readily. I have used the voice recorder less over the years but I find it optimal when time is limited and I have to move onto something else. Part of using a voice re…

What recorder make and model do you use?

I use an old Olympus WS-700M, though I did buy a different voice recorder recently and haven't used it much yet. The WS-700M works fine for its designed purpose. You can start recording basically instantly and the replaceable and rechargeable battery lasts forever. I think almost any voice recorder nowadays would work fine. You can use your phone if that works for you. It's a mature field. I just record things and delete them in a day or two. The WS-700M does also make a good MP3 player if you want something disconnected from the Internet.

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

#285

Post by igouy »

skydhash wrote: post #211
vacuity wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, though this is n = 1 and from 2000 (and it is classic Linus): Linus Torvalds: > I don't like debuggers. Never have, probably never will. I use gdb all the time, but I tend to use it not as a debugger, but as a disassembler on steroids that you can program. > I don't think kernel development should be "easy". I do not condone single-stepping through code to find the bug. I do not think that extra vi…

Debugger for me is more about inspection than actual debugging, especially when dealing with a complex systems. It's possible to just use a printf, but the debugger gives more information. It's rare that I need to do stepping. I mostly just want to see the stack trace and the state of the program. One of the nice thing about Common Lisp and Smalltalk is to be able to do this any single point.

Do this at any point and then change the state of the program.

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

#286

Post by fuzztester »

atrettel wrote: post #284
fuzztester wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What recorder make and model do you use?

I use an old Olympus WS-700M, though I did buy a different voice recorder recently and haven't used it much yet. The WS-700M works fine for its designed purpose. You can start recording basically instantly and the replaceable and rechargeable battery lasts forever. I think almost any voice recorder nowadays would work fine. You can use your phone if that works for you. It's a mature field. I just record things and de…

thanks

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

#287

Post by orev »

stronglikedan wrote: post #215
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…

I read a study a while back that said context switching costs ~15 minutes on average. I don't know how true it is, but my bosses have always believed it and tried to respect it.

I don’t think this is context switching, which would be about moving your attention to an entirely different topic. Addressing the same topic using a few different tools doesn’t require your brain to unload and reload a whole set of context information.

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

#289

Post by wglb »

xnorswap wrote: post #41
zwnow wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a few years of my career now I never had to use a debugger or CI. Console debugging is good enough usually. On version control I agree.

The conclusion I draw from this is that some debuggers are so bad it's not delivering value over "print debugging". But perhaps it's a lack of knowing what a debugger can deliver. A debugger gives you the ability to immediately dive in and instantly inspect the complete stack trace, all the values on the stack, all the values of local variables, etc. Without restarting the program or calling out specifically what you…

I've spent some quality time with debuggers but have come to the conclusion that it is a seductive way to spend time that doesn't necessarily get me there any faster than with printf or equivalent.

Admittedly, I mostly develop with sbcl and slime, so the judiciously place 'break' statement brings you to a stack trace.

Also with sbcl/slime, you can do ESC-. on a function and go to the actual source, even deep within the core of sbcl itself.

Nonetheless, I mostly depend on logging statements and print statements. When I need to go to python, print statements give most of what I need.

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

#290

Post by frankish »

reaperducer wrote: post #227
brettgriffin wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They are examples, the exactness is not what is important here. Choosing something that is not connected to electricity, an OS, or the internet to be a software developer's _most important_ tool is, in fact, the strange position here.

Choosing something that is not connected to electricity, an OS, or the internet to be a software developer's _most important_ tool is, in fact, the strange position here. Like a human brain? I'd say that is the programmer's most important tool, and it is not connected to electricity, an OS, or the internet.

Hmm, but doesn't the brain run on electricity? And why couldn't it possibly have something like an OS? I don't think we know exactly how the brain works
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