4 ms·

This is also why you should use pen and paper and not try to keep everything in your head?

by jseban 13y ago

kristiandupont 13y ago
Well isn't that sort of like saying you should keep your documents on your harddrive instead of in RAM? Writing/drawing is fine but the actual processing can only take place in the head :-)
jpatte 13y ago
The main problem of pen+paper is it's only 2D. Modeling an entire process may require a lot more than 2 dimensions, so trying to put it in 2D is actually harder than modeling it freely in your head.
- tempestn 13y ago
  Exactly. And much slower as well. Obviously if you expect to be interrupted you can take the time to download your brain onto paper, but trying to do all your work on paper would be like running your CPU through a printer->scanner loop-back.
eadlam 13y ago
Professor Manuel Blum has this to say: STUDYING: You are all computer scientists. You know what FINITE AUTOMATA can do. You know what TURING MACHINES can do. For example, Finite Automata can add but not multiply. Turing Machines can compute any computable function. Turing machines are incredibly more powerful than Finite Automata. Yet the only difference between a FA and a TM is that the TM, unlike the FA, has paper and pencil. Think about it. It tells you something about the power of writing. Without writing, you are reduced to a finite automaton. With writing you have the extraordinary power of a Turing machine. http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~mblum/research/pdf/grad.html http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~mblum/research/pdf/grad.html
n3rdy 13y ago
If were that simple then why wouldn't we just type it into our programming environment instead?
- kamaal 13y ago
  Because editors are great recording tools but very bad thinking tools. Nothing really beats the flexibility of pencil and paper. You can draw boxes, doodles, graphs, heuristics, flow charts, mind maps etc. Basically you can do what you can think and conceive of, with your mind as your only limit.

This is also why you should use pen and paper and not try to keep everything in your head?

by jseban 13y ago

This is also why you should use pen and paper and not try to keep everything in your head?

Well isn't that sort of like saying you should keep your documents on your harddrive instead of in RAM? Writing/drawing is fine but the actual processing can only take place in the head :-)

jpatte 13y ago

The main problem of pen+paper is it's only 2D. Modeling an entire process may require a lot more than 2 dimensions, so trying to put it in 2D is actually harder than modeling it freely in your head.

tempestn 13y ago
Exactly. And much slower as well. Obviously if you expect to be interrupted you can take the time to download your brain onto paper, but trying to do all your work on paper would be like running your CPU through a printer->scanner loop-back.

eadlam 13y ago

Professor Manuel Blum has this to say: STUDYING: You are all computer scientists. You know what FINITE AUTOMATA can do. You know what TURING MACHINES can do. For example, Finite Automata can add but not multiply. Turing Machines can compute any computable function. Turing machines are incredibly more powerful than Finite Automata. Yet the only difference between a FA and a TM is that the TM, unlike the FA, has paper and pencil. Think about it. It tells you something about the power of writing. Without writing, you are reduced to a finite automaton. With writing you have the extraordinary power of a Turing machine. http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~mblum/research/pdf/grad.html http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~mblum/research/pdf/grad.html

n3rdy 13y ago

If were that simple then why wouldn't we just type it into our programming environment instead?

kamaal 13y ago
Because editors are great recording tools but very bad thinking tools. Nothing really beats the flexibility of pencil and paper. You can draw boxes, doodles, graphs, heuristics, flow charts, mind maps etc. Basically you can do what you can think and conceive of, with your mind as your only limit.