Walked into a co-working space and saw someone debugging on a napkin

I stopped by a place called The Hive downtown last week to check out their events calendar. This guy at a corner table had actual code scrawled across three cocktail napkins and was typing it line by line into his laptop. It made me wonder if planning out logic on paper is something beginners should try more often. Has anyone else found that writing code out by hand helps you catch bugs before you even run it?

2 comments

2 Comments

ryanh5611d ago

Three cocktail napkins" sounds about right for that modern day poetry slam we call coding. Hand writing it out is just a slower way to introduce typos before your IDE catches them anyway.

the_joseph10d ago

@ryanh56 makes a fair point about typos but I think its missing the bigger picture. Watching that guy with his napkins reminded me of how people in other fields do the same thing. Mechanics sketch out wiring diagrams on scrap paper before touching a car. Cooks write down recipe tweaks on sticky notes before they start cooking. The act of writing by hand slows you down and forces you to actually think through each step instead of just typing and hoping for the best. Its like a reality check for your brain before the computer gets involved. Maybe the guys napkin method wasnt as ridiculous as it looked from across the room.