4 ms·
He was very wise on this matter. The best code I've written was thanks to first designing it on paper.
by dozzie 11y ago
He was very wise on this matter. The best code I've written was thanks to
first designing it on paper.
- noir_lord 11y agoHe was an insanely smart guy, Type 2 Unixbeard (the skinny one with the pony tail rather than Type 1, the portly one with the T-shirt of a bankrupt tech company). Back in the 80's he worked on the software that ran/runs digital switching for (iirc) BT, high scale, high reliability stuff in C.
- 13of40 11y agoI don't write on paper anymore, but I still write all my comments first, then fill in the code.
- eru 11y agoHaskell has a mode, where you everything is a comment by default, and lines of code have to be marked as such.
- throwaway999888 11y agoAlso known as literate programming.
- cheez 11y agoOne time, in university I did not have access to a computer for a couple of days and had to write code for a b-tree in C++. I designed and wrote the code fully on paper and when I got access to a computer, I typed it in and it worked! I think that was my peak.
- epalmer 11y ago>I think that was my peak. Have you tried to recreate that peak? I'm wondering if it worked so well why you might not have continued working in that mode?
- cheez 11y agoMy statement was a little tongue-in-cheek but that was the first time I felt the raw power of my mind. I still feel it now, but it doesn't have as much of an impact as it did then. It's probably what everyone feels when they are in the zone. So now, I will walk around doing nothing for 4 to 5 hours to let my brain work on a problem, then type it in and have it work in 10 minutes. I do this same thing with design, not just code. I've noticed that coding has become a lot easier as a result. I still get stuck when I'm dealing with other people's bugs though, especially with third party libraries. One I've noticed is that being in my head so much makes it more difficult to explain things to other people and I think this hurts me.