I've been writing some assembly, learning ED, and some other things on my Kaypro 1. I write notes on paper from the reference material on my desktop then go over to the Kaypro to apply it. Seems to work really well for learning and brings back memories of college classes.
People who can't give up paper
31–40 of 168 posts
Re: People who can't give up paper
#32> Paper, it seems, still rules the waves. You'd be crazy to get rid of paper charts on a boat, for the same reason any hiker is instructed to carry a paper map, and the smart ones actually do it. Yeah, the primary system will be GPS, but that system requires a lot of things to be functioning which may not always be functioning. You need a backup, and paper is perfect for that.
>any hiker is instructed to carry a paper map
The best maps are cloth maps. They are amazing as you can bend those, put over a stone, rain could go over.
Re: People who can't give up paper
#33I've worked in tech as a software engineer developing web applications for 25 years and I'm one of these people. For note taking, I prefer pen and paper. For diagramming and brainstorming, I prefer a physical whiteboard. For non-work related scheduling, I prefer marking things on the physical calendar hanging on my wall... or sometimes I'll reach for a post-it note. For bills, I prefer that my company mail me a paper…
I'm in the same situation as you. Though I think the major factor is that the physicality of handwriting the notes helps me.
Re: People who can't give up paper
#34A professor once gave me a demo of a printer that could erase its own work and print a new image on the same regular printer paper.
In between the two prints he let me mark the page however I wanted so I could be sure it was the same physical page coming back out.
He admitted there was no market for such a thing but it was cool to see anyways. This was in the mid 1990s
Re: People who can't give up paper
#35for everybody still on physical medium (be it paper, board, whatever), did you try to leverage digital tools thinking it would allow wider expressiveness, faster iteration, more precision and yet came back to paper ? if so do you think it's due to cultural habit (being raised on pen and paper) or maybe a neurological need (paper requires more psycho/physical stimulation, you have to draw geometries, letters, organise…
> if so do you think it's due to cultural habit (being raised on pen and paper) or maybe a neurological need (paper requires more psycho/physical stimulation, you have to draw geometries, letters, organise.. that cost might be actually beneficial for your brain way of working)
There is some of that. But pen and paper has other benefits that are hard to match:
- Pen & Paper works even if there is a service disruption / outage
- Pen & Paper works even if the device's battery dies or the power goes out
- Pen & Paper is fast. I don't need to unlock the screen, I don't experience progressive sluggishness due to memory leaks, analytics / telemetry running in the background or feature/library bloat
- Pen & Paper doesn't send everything that I'm writing to some remote server for analytics purposes
- Pen & Paper has never crashed on me
- I get to decide if and when I want the newest version of pen/paper. I don't ever reach for Pen & Paper to discover that some product owner has pushed a change on me without my opt-in / consent.
- Pen & Paper works in virtually every envrionment, regardless of whether I'm wearing gloves or my hands are cold (though admittedly cold hands can slow down the writing process, but much less so than trying to use a touch-screen or keyboard).
- Pen & Paper is often easier to read (assuming the hand-writing is legible, which is admittedly hit or miss, but it causes much less eye fatigue than staring at a screen).
- Pen & Paper doesn't distract me with spell/grammar checks that I don't need in the moment. Disabling / re-enabling these features is time consuming.
- Pen & Paper is a technology that has truly stood the test of time. The fact that it continues to persist into the digital age is very telling. Sometimes "simple & works" beats new and featureful but complicated.
Re: People who can't give up paper
#36for everybody still on physical medium (be it paper, board, whatever), did you try to leverage digital tools thinking it would allow wider expressiveness, faster iteration, more precision and yet came back to paper ? if so do you think it's due to cultural habit (being raised on pen and paper) or maybe a neurological need (paper requires more psycho/physical stimulation, you have to draw geometries, letters, organise…
For me it's just that it works much better for some tasks.
Re: People who can't give up paper
#37Sometimes I want to get more into paper, so I have an excuse to buy pretty notebooks. I do that about once a year and never end up using it right now. Secondarily, hearing about our risks of EMPs from solar flares (or even in war scenarios), or in case of electrical grid collapse (a not-impossible scenario in some countries), paper is the only way I'll have survival knowledge available to me.
My favorite indulgence is high quality thesis-like paper. Archival quality, with nice cotton fibers. Pair with some nice ink nibs or fountain pens... ahhh
Re: People who can't give up paper
#38> Paper, it seems, still rules the waves. You'd be crazy to get rid of paper charts on a boat, for the same reason any hiker is instructed to carry a paper map, and the smart ones actually do it. Yeah, the primary system will be GPS, but that system requires a lot of things to be functioning which may not always be functioning. You need a backup, and paper is perfect for that.
Re: hiking, your comment reminded me of this recent write-up in the Seattle Times. It's hard to imagine serious hikers hitting the trail in the PNW without at least one person in the party carrying the relevant Green Trails paper maps, but I suppose they exist.
https://www.seattletimes.com/life/outdoors/seattle-mapmaker-...
“Your devices aren’t big enough to show you the context at any level of detail that from our point of view would be useful,” he said, citing the possibility of needing to find an escape route in a wildfire. “If you unfold a map, you can see where you are and get a better handle on where you can go.”
Coburn’s stewardship also resulted in the durable quality of today’s Green Trails maps. Made of Polyart tearproof synthetic paper, with special ink to shade topographic relief, and printed at Capitol City Press in Olympia, these maps have a clear selling point: waterproof, solar-powered, no batteries required."
Re: People who can't give up paper
#39> Paper, it seems, still rules the waves. You'd be crazy to get rid of paper charts on a boat, for the same reason any hiker is instructed to carry a paper map, and the smart ones actually do it. Yeah, the primary system will be GPS, but that system requires a lot of things to be functioning which may not always be functioning. You need a backup, and paper is perfect for that.
Ya, lunacy to do any outdoors without paper map + compass beyond the there-and-back loop where you can still hear car traffic.
Re: People who can't give up paper
#40For me personally paper is indispensable as a design tool for sketching out complex systems. I "think" more clearly on paper than I do with any digital tool I've used. In an aviation context I mostly use an iPad these days (learned to fly long before iPads were a thing) but I carry some backup paper charts. I've had chargers fail mid-trip and the electronic flight bag apps are real power hogs. And that's not to menti…
I'm always fascinated with the folks who still carry paper sectionals.. at any given time in the cockpit Ive got three digital sources of charts that would have to fail, not counting whatever onboard gps I'm flying behind (primary tablet, backup tablet, phone).. I just can't find the point in carrying paper anymore, at least for my risk matrix.. Re: GPS failure, that's orthogonal to the paper argument, since paper do…
You’ll know the value of it when your electronics bork out in a no-fail situation. Or it’s a stress situation and the quick reference chart on paper can be eyeballed while the iPad requires a couple clicks.
It happens eventually.