Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by DANK_YACHT 1478 days ago
I use pen and paper as well, but rather than print out all the source code, I write down the call stack. A calls B calls C, etc. along with the line numbers of the call. Much easier than printing out the source and you still have the IDE niceties like go to definition, find in source, etc.
2 comments

This reminded when I had to maintain dozens of old 10,000 lines COBOL programs as a junior programmer. I felt so lost I made a program that would print only the names of data structures and functions. Seeing the source resumed in a handful of pages, and being able to highlight and draw on it, helped me a lot. Digital has flexibility, but sometimes paper works best.
Paper is one of those Perfected technologies. It's been there for a long time but boooy. It's powerful
Hah! I did the exact same thing for ages on paper and eventually evolved the system to manage my workload and context switching… I still use it a lot for going deep while debugging/understanding code. I ended up making it into an app when I broke my wrist and could still type but couldn’t hold a pen. I can’t remember if there’s rules about self promotion in comments here but it’s up at journalist mode dot com