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I've never really had success doing concept work of any kind with pen and paper. Especially writing, but even diagramming. If I need to step back and work with

I've never really had success doing concept work of any kind with pen and paper. Especially writing, but even diagramming. If I need to step back and work with ideas abstractly, the paper medium is still going to get in the way at least as much as the digital text does. What I really have to do is keep it all conceptual in my mind; that's the only medium that's truly unopinionated and flexible. Paper/whiteboarding is more for communication to others, in my experience

dylan604 5y ago
Can I ask if you ever had any kind of art/drawing type of classes? I very often turn to sketches as my first attempt. I will often turn to paper first. I can sketch things faster than using something like Sketch. Maybe it's because I come from a wood working background where rough/not-to-scale sketches with dimensions written in were common just to double check your cut lists. Mearsure twice, cut once. Also, I'm old enough to not have always had electronic devices, so sketching was all we had. In college, I didn't live on campus while living with my parental units an hour away. With the limited access to the computer lab, I would hand write code on paper and then transcribe. Then, right at the end of lab time, hit print so I could continue debugging by making notes on the greenbar print outs.
- brundolf 5y ago
  I haven't really had art classes, no The problem I run into when I'm brainstorming or thinking about high-level architectural/modeling questions, is that if I start drawing something I get focused on how to represent my current idea and I stop actually developing the idea itself. And then if I change my mind, I have to go back and erase or strike things out instead of just redirecting my thought. Etc. Usually if something is new for me or ill-defined, I take a walk or a shower and work through a rough idea of the big picture (usually realizing and iterating on some of the high-level problems) without any medium. And then when I sit down to start seeing what that established will look like more tangibly, I usually go straight to the computer. Though I will say, I sometimes turn off type-checking when I'm just writing the idea out the first time. It can get really distracting when the code is going to be "broken" for the first 90% of the process. Once I've given it a look over and feel good about it, then I turn editor hints back on to nail it down and get it running.
  - strken 5y ago
    For diagramming, I really only do it to document connections between things. Everything is either a chunk of text, optionally in a box or circle; a line or arrow; or a note beside the first two. It emerges directly from what I'm thinking without much extra thought, and usually gets discarded or rewritten before anyone else reads it, or if there's too much crossed out. Sort of like a swap file, where if the number of items gets bigger than my working memory, I dump some of them onto a sheet of paper rather than thinking about all of them at once. I'm interested in hearing how other people approach diagrams, because I bet there are a lot of different approaches, and no one size fits all.
    - brundolf 5y ago
      Right but as soon as I've written down a blurb or drawn a line I feel like it's set in stone a little bit. It feels like a decision. It isn't necessarily - I can always erase it or draw it again on a new page - but that carries friction which interrupts the process. It works better at the phase after ideation, where I'm pretty sure I have the major ideas in place and I want to see them to make sure they make sense. But even then I prefer a digital medium because of how easy it is to delete or modify (even an eraser leaves behind a smudge, adding something to a list on paper means moving each item by hand, etc).
      - dylan604 5y ago
        >Right but as soon as I've written down a blurb or drawn a line I feel like it's set in stone a little bit Use a pencil, and not a pen ;-) Much less permanent. Just knowing you can erase should make it feel less decisionish. For me it's the opposite. If it's a sketch on paper, it is so much more transitional. Once it's in code and executable, it makes me want to keep forcing things until it works. But that's what makes it fun. Each dev sees the same problem totally differently and approaches it in their own way.
  - Infernal 5y ago
    I identify with this so much. Pacing, talking to myself even yes, but always manipulating concepts in my mind - and writing the code once it becomes clear. The idea of introducing diagrams or sketches into that process sounds disruptive and distracting at best.
rramadass 5y ago
I suggest that you maybe looking at/doing it wrong. See my other comments in this thread for some notes that may inspire you to give it another try but with a different mindset. The reason i say this is that i used to be in the same boat i.e. i can do everything within my head and don't need any external crutches. But once complexity really swamped me (it has become the norm now) nothing but pen and paper has helped me to effectively tame it. See also Dijkstra's paper, The Humble Programmer.

dylan604 5y ago

Can I ask if you ever had any kind of art/drawing type of classes? I very often turn to sketches as my first attempt. I will often turn to paper first. I can sketch things faster than using something like Sketch. Maybe it's because I come from a wood working background where rough/not-to-scale sketches with dimensions written in were common just to double check your cut lists. Mearsure twice, cut once. Also, I'm old enough to not have always had electronic devices, so sketching was all we had. In college, I didn't live on campus while living with my parental units an hour away. With the limited access to the computer lab, I would hand write code on paper and then transcribe. Then, right at the end of lab time, hit print so I could continue debugging by making notes on the greenbar print outs.

brundolf 5y ago
I haven't really had art classes, no The problem I run into when I'm brainstorming or thinking about high-level architectural/modeling questions, is that if I start drawing something I get focused on how to represent my current idea and I stop actually developing the idea itself. And then if I change my mind, I have to go back and erase or strike things out instead of just redirecting my thought. Etc. Usually if something is new for me or ill-defined, I take a walk or a shower and work through a rough idea of the big picture (usually realizing and iterating on some of the high-level problems) without any medium. And then when I sit down to start seeing what that established will look like more tangibly, I usually go straight to the computer. Though I will say, I sometimes turn off type-checking when I'm just writing the idea out the first time. It can get really distracting when the code is going to be "broken" for the first 90% of the process. Once I've given it a look over and feel good about it, then I turn editor hints back on to nail it down and get it running.
- strken 5y ago
  For diagramming, I really only do it to document connections between things. Everything is either a chunk of text, optionally in a box or circle; a line or arrow; or a note beside the first two. It emerges directly from what I'm thinking without much extra thought, and usually gets discarded or rewritten before anyone else reads it, or if there's too much crossed out. Sort of like a swap file, where if the number of items gets bigger than my working memory, I dump some of them onto a sheet of paper rather than thinking about all of them at once. I'm interested in hearing how other people approach diagrams, because I bet there are a lot of different approaches, and no one size fits all.
  - brundolf 5y ago
    Right but as soon as I've written down a blurb or drawn a line I feel like it's set in stone a little bit. It feels like a decision. It isn't necessarily - I can always erase it or draw it again on a new page - but that carries friction which interrupts the process. It works better at the phase after ideation, where I'm pretty sure I have the major ideas in place and I want to see them to make sure they make sense. But even then I prefer a digital medium because of how easy it is to delete or modify (even an eraser leaves behind a smudge, adding something to a list on paper means moving each item by hand, etc).
    - dylan604 5y ago
      >Right but as soon as I've written down a blurb or drawn a line I feel like it's set in stone a little bit Use a pencil, and not a pen ;-) Much less permanent. Just knowing you can erase should make it feel less decisionish. For me it's the opposite. If it's a sketch on paper, it is so much more transitional. Once it's in code and executable, it makes me want to keep forcing things until it works. But that's what makes it fun. Each dev sees the same problem totally differently and approaches it in their own way.
- Infernal 5y ago
  I identify with this so much. Pacing, talking to myself even yes, but always manipulating concepts in my mind - and writing the code once it becomes clear. The idea of introducing diagrams or sketches into that process sounds disruptive and distracting at best.

rramadass 5y ago

I suggest that you maybe looking at/doing it wrong. See my other comments in this thread for some notes that may inspire you to give it another try but with a different mindset. The reason i say this is that i used to be in the same boat i.e. i can do everything within my head and don't need any external crutches. But once complexity really swamped me (it has become the norm now) nothing but pen and paper has helped me to effectively tame it. See also Dijkstra's paper, The Humble Programmer.