[zrobotics]

I took a very similar class 9 years ago, and it was honestly one of the most helpful things I got out of my CS degree. The low level and limited tooling taught me to think before I start writing.

I've had other people look askanse at me, but on greenfield work I tend to start with pen and graph paper. I'm not even writing pseudocode, but diagramming a loose graph with potential functions or classes and arrows interconnecting them. Obviously this can be taken too far, full waterfall planning will be a different exercise in frustration.

I find spending a few hours planning out ahead of time before opening an editor saves me tons of time actually coding. I've never had a project even loosely resemble the paper diagram, but the exercise of thinking through the general structure ahead of time makes me way more productive when it comes time to start writing code. I've tried diagramming and scaffolding in my editor, but then I end up actually writing code instead of big picture diagramming. Writing it on paper where I know I'll have to retype everything anyway removes the distractions of what method to use or what to name a variable.

The few times I've vibe-coded something this was super helpful, since then I can give much more concrete and focused prompts.

[jimbokun]

This is why whiteboards used to be so popular in many/most tech company offices.

Doing this exact same process interactively with other people, and a not to NOT ERASE or later taking a picture of the whiteboard with your phone.

[bsaul]

"used to be" ?? What are engineering team doing nowadays when discussing architecturing their systems ?

[wrs]

In my experience the last several years, primarily we’re all on Zoom waving our hands and making false promises to update Confluence with what we talked about. I miss offices with walls and whiteboards.

[josh_s]

Miro.com is one of the few SaaS products that our team's collaboration could not live without.

Perfect for a distributed team to replace the DO NOT ERASE white boards of yore.

[bsaul]

yes miro is also what i'm using. It's really a digital whiteboard.

[jimbokun]

Working remotely.

[BrandoElFollito]

I have theee whiteboards in ly office, and almost all the walls of my teams space is covered with whiteboards. They are always full and it is always a drama when some space need to be made

[hackable_sand]

In my opinion you should immediately erase after solving the problem on the whiteboard, never taking a picture.

Same with notes that you will never see again. Done in pen, on random pages.

That process is bulletproof, for me.

[bdangubic]

exactly the same for me, 30 years and counting…

[chrisweekly]

"Plans are useless, but planning is essential."