I was going to post this on another thread (the Neal Stephenson one https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35015121 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35015121)

I was going to post this on another thread (the Neal Stephenson one https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35015121 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35015121), but it also fits here: Donald Knuth does all his writing (even coding!) by hand with pencil on notepad, going through several rounds of editing before anything reaches a computer, and his stated reason is that he can type faster than he can think. (Somewhere a typing speed of 80 wpm is mentioned, which is not even all that fast.) So he says that writing by hand, being slower, perfectly matches the speed at which he can think. In other words, he describes himself as a slow thinker. (We can actually get some glimpses of the way he thinks from his public lectures, e.g. I love the 2017 Christmas lecture https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxQw4CdxLr8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxQw4CdxLr8 or maybe—I haven't watched much—the 1985 problem-solving seminar course https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLABJEFgj0PWW9fQwb8JVDRaorXNin8VgC https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLABJEFgj0PWW9fQwb8JVD... .) And if Knuth describes himself as a slow thinker, it is a lesson to us all.