| It’s funny reading all the anecdotes on how handwriting notes help with programming. Because for me it is the complete opposite. I think the part that helps so many here is the taking your time to think about the problem. That is the important part. When I work on geometric or algorithmic problems, hand drawn sketches help a lot. But writing by hand is just so slow for me, compared to typing, that I can’t get all my thoughts out fast enough. That’s why I usually write long bullet outlines in Evernote or some other tool when thinking about a problem. It lets me capture any thought quickly while also letting me organize them on the fly, by reordering, creating hierarchies, adding links or images, even hand drawn sketches. Seeing the structure further helps thinking about the problem. In the end i have a relatively exhaustive, structured note informing me of pitfalls, requirements etc. Compare that to writing by hand, not being able to read parts, constantly erasing, not being able to rearrange my notes anywhere as quickly... I hate it tbh. And i don’t even think that training to write nicer and faster would help that much. Thinking about where to write what in advance, to me, is restricting my flow of thoughts and gets completely in the way. If I knew what I will be writing down in advance, I wouldn’t have to do the exercise to begin with. |