I assume you mean “in graduate school on”. Having worked in scientific modelling I read a hell of a lot of field specific papers when implementing tools. They w

I assume you mean “in graduate school on”. Having worked in scientific modelling I read a hell of a lot of field specific papers when implementing tools. They were the spec sheets for the work, containing the mathematical model, it’s validation or application. For me, paper with a hiliter and a pen or the digital equivalents worked. I ended up with a marked up document that made the fine details easy to find and had text that could be used in documentation.