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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

#61

Post by guappa »

WalterBright wrote: post #37
bufferoverflow wrote: post #2

I don't understand the pen/physical notebook thing. It's slow to write, insanely slow to search what you've written, almost impossible to copy or share.

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.

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

#62

Post by [deleted] »

zwnow wrote: post #7
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.

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.

[deleted]

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

#63

Post by _Algernon_ »

bufferoverflow wrote: post #2

I don't understand the pen/physical notebook thing. It's slow to write, insanely slow to search what you've written, almost impossible to copy or share.

I mean the obvious example is that you can sketch graphs or figures easily without any additional friction. Very few digital notes allow that.

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

#64

Post by austin-cheney »

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.

If you need a framework to do the job you were hired to perform then, clearly, that framework is the most important tool. You likely don’t exist professionally without it.

For people with higher confidence, those of us who have been around the block a few times, the article is correct. The supporting tools you mention are beneficial, but they aren’t the most important tool. The most important tool is soft skills and taking notes.

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

#65

Post by voidUpdate »

I don't tend to use it extensively, but I find it much easier to work out things, especially graphical things, when I can doodle it on some paper rather than having to type it into notepad. For example, yesterday I was working out how to generate a mesh of triangles and needed to work out the vertex indices. It was quicker to doodle a net of triangles and note number them than to try and do it on the computer. It's probably because I'm a very visual thinker. It's also easier to work out an equation on paper than on a computer when I've got fractions and powers and stuff that are annoying at best to represent in plain text

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

#66

Post by gherkinnn »

As in "the most important accessory beyond a computer and a text editor", I absolutely agree for how I work and think.

Nothing I have tried comes close. No iPad, writing code directly, talking it through, thinking it through, sketching it out on whatever drawing tool you might like. Pencil and paper are all I want.

Now, let's argue about our favourite colours and why teal is objectively the best.

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

#67

Post by kennu »

I understand the sentiment, but I don't get how you could draw more complex software plans by hand. I usually use Draw.io/Diagrams.net, and the drawings get pretty large and need reorganizing dozens of boxes several times while planning the architecture.

OTOH if the plan is very simple and obvious, and can be drawn out in one go, it doesn't really need a diagram in the first place, so I skip spending time drawing the obvious stuff.

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

#68

Post by gofreddygo »

MrGilbert wrote: post #38
gofreddygo wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny. I was tolling the virtues of my spiral notebook which is always on my desk to a coworker, whom I was trying to get out of some trouble and i got... silence. That notebook is the difference between said coworker and I. She didn't get it. That notebook is the fastest most accessible tool to capture my thoughts. I can state concisely what was discussed in a team meeting last october before any notetaking tool boo…

I think an analog note taking device (woah!) requires more discipline than a digital one. In the digital world, you can always re-arrange your chaos at almost no cost, whereas you are screwed in the analog world. I'm curious: How do you organize your notes? If you mind to share.

First there's a work notebook and a personal one. both are semi structured, but work one has more structure.

first page is always for index, split vertically and you get roughly 80 entries with about 3-4 words each. one for each page that i number as i go writing through the book. index usually has just pointers to days when i get interesting ideas.

each right page is for 1 week that i label up top. a small margin is dedicated for recurring meetings. using only the right side allows quickly flipping through. rest of the page is for todos and logs.

left pages are for related thoughts, ideas, etc from that week. sometimes overflows but not by much.

For wordy stuff, i use pages from the back of the book. I don't use sentences much. Just few words with lines connecting them.

Thats pretty much it - index, numbered pages and using just the right side per week. It works wonders for how simple it is. You'll find something else that works for you. Don't overthink this. Just start with a structure and let it evolve.

side note - i do use a folder for plain text notes on my work laptop (that i keep open in sublime) for links and text that benefits from copy and paste. i would not care if it all got deleted or leaked out to the world. I also have another folder of interesting bookmarks and articles exported to pdf for reading on a flight on my phone. i have a dozen or so google docs with my thoughts on topics i'm interested in.

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

#69

Post by yetihehe »

zwnow wrote: post #7
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.

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.

Debuggers are important tool, but not all debugger are good and not all problems require debugger. That's why I wrote a simple tool, which given a list of methods and classes will printf to log every invocation and exit of selected functions (via java reflection and function rewriting). It was much better than a normal debugger at finding actual flow of data in very complex multi-program system, so essentially machinegun-printf saved the day.

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

#70

Post by sixtyj »

sky2224 wrote: post #25

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'…

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 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.

But today's kids, being digital natives, may take a different approach. Paper&pen may present anxiety for them. So it very much depends on the family we grew up in.

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