If you consider the diagrams as a physical manifestation of abstractions that can eventually be converted into boolean logic, etc than it's the same thing. For

If you consider the diagrams as a physical manifestation of abstractions that can eventually be converted into boolean logic, etc than it's the same thing. For many years I used to draw on paper a mix of non-standard diagrams with some pseudo-code to discuss slightly complex algorithm implementations with peers... the more coding experience you have, the less you need to do this and you usually make the connections just in your brains and start coding. So my tip here is if you want to learn how to do it on the fly you should start with small steps by reducing the amount of stuff you need to see in a paper before start coding. In the other hand it's perfectly normal and there is no problem in doing what you do.