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Just curious: Why does printing it on paper helps you to understand code better than reading it on screen?

• zentiggr 13y ago
  Every once in a while you find code whose control structures are wrapped around a ton of working code... paging up and down to try to grok the entire structure pagefaults my short term memory badly enough that having it all visible at once is the only workaround. Sometimes, if you're really lucky, the blocks of working code don't modify their own conditionals, and you can 'fold' them and just look at the if's and loops...
• pseut 13y ago
  For me, the ability to spread the paper across a table and look at many different parts of the code simultaneously. It's like having a giant high resolution monitor. Also, faster and more flexible annotation (drawings, etc), but that's secondary.
• MartinCron 13y ago
  I've only had to print terrible code to understand it. I think it's a way to leverage the spatial part of your brain more directly.... where was that part of this huge method that did that... oh, it's top left.
• walshemj 13y ago
  Because if you can find a room with enough table space you can lay out all of the code at once instead of having to jump back and forward on a small screen. A 4x6 table has far more surface area than even the biggest multi monitor set up
• danabramov 13y ago
  It helps to understand the structure. I was looking for repetitions (and luckily I found a lot), but I needed to look out for things that change between repetitions. I just found the picture I took that day. The boxing gloves just happened to be in the same conf room. http://i.imgur.com/bQCA08C.jpg http://i.imgur.com/bQCA08C.jpg
  • hamburglar 13y ago
    Looking as close as I can at those printouts, my only reaction is, "that's CODE?!" Good lord.