> Most people started by scratching their head and looking into space for a long time. Then they started drawing some sketches of flow (maybe with flowcharts, b

> Most people started by scratching their head and looking into space for a long time. Then they started drawing some sketches of flow (maybe with flowcharts, but often not doing that formally). Then they wrote out the code on coding sheets that had columns matching the columns on cards. Then they spent time reading the code and thinking like the machine. This sounds a lot like how I work when writing new code that's not just a quick throw-away script, but built to last. If implementing a new feature takes me one week, then the first one is usually spent just reading the existing code and thinking about the other parts of the application and environment are going to interact with the new feature. It takes more time initially, but it saves me a ton of pain down the line, and luckily my managers appreciate that trade-off as much as I do.