Writing code without an IDE forces you to question your assumptions and acknowledge your ignorance of the language, operating system, runtime, and application t

Writing code without an IDE forces you to question your assumptions and acknowledge your ignorance of the language, operating system, runtime, and application themselves. If I'm creating a new data structure and find myself unsure whether the type for one of its members is initialized to a certain value implicitly, that's an opportunity for me to learn something when I transcribe the code later. Handwriting in particular is useful to me professionally because it forces me to slow down and consider each line. I find that I wind up with better implementations when I write an initial version in longhand, if only because I frequently circle blocks and ask clarifying questions about my own work. I doubt this approach is generally useful to every programmer. I hesitate to recommend it. But yes, there are benefits to me at least.