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> I'm aware that this is from 1997-1999, but I'm curious: Do people still print out source code for better reading? I know a bunch of embedded C programmers wh
by throwaway7767 11y ago
> I'm aware that this is from 1997-1999, but I'm curious: Do people still print out source code for better reading?
I know a bunch of embedded C programmers who have been doing it for a long time who do this regularly. They know their stuff. They don't print out the whole codebase, just a few pages of whatever they're working on, then they annotate it with a pen while thinking about whatever problems they are solving.
- yoklov 11y agoI can imagine this being more helpful if you lacked access to a debugger, and lacked the time (or desire) to build debugging tools by other means... Which I imagine is plausible in that context.
- throwaway7767 11y agoNo, they have debuggers and modern dev tools. They just prefer to read code from paper when they have to really focus on it for a long time.
- roghummal 11y agoIn my experience, it's less about reading code on paper than it is the other thing you mentioned: >then they annotate it with a pen while thinking about whatever problems they are solving. Paper and pen offer a lot of options you don't have in vim (or emacs/notepad.exe/etc ;)). Circling, doodling, arrows, underlining, furiously scribbling...