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Paper is dead, long live paper programming

sacrideo.us

51–60 of 89 posts

Re: Paper is dead, long live paper programming

#51
post #2

His handwriting is gorgeous!

Except I literally cannot read it

Did you not learn cursive in grade school? This looks exceptionally readable to me, and other than the capital letters it doesn't really have any flourishes.

And given how practiced his hand looks, I wouldn't be surprised if he was able to write this much quicker in cursive than I could write it in printed letters.

Re: Paper is dead, long live paper programming

#53
post #47
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm highly interested to know what class of "common mistakes" you are referring to here. This sounds like a very fun environment/method to do things.

Over time, I got used to catching off-by-one errors in loops as well as assignment to incorrect variables of the same type. But when I write code in an editor, these errors always pop up. I guess it's because the feedback loop is so small, whereas every second counts in a competition environment. Yes, it was pretty fun. I wish I took it more seriously though: we never really practiced much and just attended competiti…

I would think you'd catch more errors since you're reading through your own code in it's entirety, as well. Mistakes like mis-assigned variables are easy to make while you're actively thinking about your code but they stand out when you're just reading it.

Re: Paper is dead, long live paper programming

#54

I always find writing out my programs (even in pseudocode) before actually attempting to type it out has helped me weed out bugs in the long run. This is especially true as long as whiteboard interviews is still relevant. Despite me typing pretty fast on a keyboard (~90wpm), writing things out on paper makes me think more carefully, and I don't have to maintain a contextual overhead in pressing the right keys or seei…

yeah i think this is a gooid practice rather then diving right into the editor. Of course certain tasks you might know exactly where/what to code so you just get it done. But if there is any uncertainty or open-endedness i find it's very helpful to write out a set of steps to accomplish. breakign down the problem , smaller chunks etc. many benefits for me not limited to better code less bugs. Biggest one for me is the ability to turn off my dang monitor for a while and look at something that is not a screen. I'll grab my notebook, go sit by a window or something and start brainstorming. it's a nice refresh, plus when you get back to your terminal it's moreso a translation exercise and you can really pump out the code fast.

Re: Paper is dead, long live paper programming

#55
post #25

In 1992 for my final pre-exams deliverable at uni I wrote the entire program text (in Pascal) out on pen and paper overnight, fuelled by cheap lager and Red Bull. Queued at the door waiting for the lab to open in the morning, then typed the lot in and was delighted to discover not only no syntax errors, but no bugs. Ran it, took a few screenshots, printed them and the listing, delivered it to my tutor and went to the…

I can readily agree with this approach. My handwriting is... suitable for a doctor at best, so a word processor is pretty important to me when it comes down to implementation, but I've had so many problems just melt away in the face of a pencil and a good graph or summary.

Re: Paper is dead, long live paper programming

#56
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except I literally cannot read it

Did you not learn cursive in grade school? This looks exceptionally readable to me, and other than the capital letters it doesn't really have any flourishes. And given how practiced his hand looks, I wouldn't be surprised if he was able to write this much quicker in cursive than I could write it in printed letters.

I learned cursive in grade school (xennial represent) but neither I nor my classmates wrote like this. This is some Declaration of Independence shit right here.

Re: Paper is dead, long live paper programming

#57

This is the sort of thing I write into "notes.txt" and check in to source control as a support document. Writing your notes in a bound notebook as un-OCR-able calligraphy, and then scanning the results to image files is not likely to endear you to me as a co-worker.

You'd rather have plain text than hand-written diagrams? I think most of the difficulty is in not knowing APL like notation.

Re: Paper is dead, long live paper programming

#58
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do all my coding in gregg shorthand

I know this was a joke, but do you by any chance know any shorthand? I tried to teach myself Gregg here and there years ago, but it requires more dedication than I was willing to put in to become fluent.

perhaps an alphabetic shorthand like keyscript?

Re: Paper is dead, long live paper programming

#59
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's some Spencerian variation, indeed. I can't fathom why he uses that paper format... Those pages are annoyingly narrow! Also, I agree with you, Spencerian (or any other ornate script) is not the best for coding notes.

Which script would be best, in your opinion?

I'd use some italic variation, probably. If you insist on something cursive, some form of business writing would probably be better.

Of course, to each their own... (I love penmanship, and I'm fluent in several scripts, but I do my coding in Emacs, thank you very much!)

Re: Paper is dead, long live paper programming

#60

This is the sort of thing I write into "notes.txt" and check in to source control as a support document. Writing your notes in a bound notebook as un-OCR-able calligraphy, and then scanning the results to image files is not likely to endear you to me as a co-worker.

You'd rather have plain text than hand-written diagrams? I think most of the difficulty is in not knowing APL like notation.

Yes, but I have a tool for making images on my computer, too.

The handwritten bound notebook cannot be searched, diff'ed, or versioned. It is strictly inferior to the plaintext file in most ways that are in any way relevant to writing software.

Its nemesis, of course, is and has always been the mathematical equation, whose notations confound the plaintext writer at every turn. For those, you can write it to an image, or use LaTeX or MathML.

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