Doodling on paper always helps. The more time spent with pen and paper first before typing starts, the smoother things go, and the less spaghetti to refactor la

Doodling on paper always helps. The more time spent with pen and paper first before typing starts, the smoother things go, and the less spaghetti to refactor later. Diagramming relationships of parts, program flow, data structures etc. I find everything much easier to think about with a picture of it in front of me. For the crux of an algorithm, I set/update the variables on paper to check it works. I can't imagine trying to do something complex without doing the planning on paper first. Once I think about it enough I find myself quickly writing the procedure/function down on paper. Typing it in becomes the first refactoring.