points by lieks 4 days ago | 0 comments
When I was at school, I used to program on paper like this (due to not having a computer during class). It was accidentally a great exercise, that I think everyone should try. Because of it, I find myself writing mostly bug-free code on my first try these days (my bugs tend to happen on interactions between parts of a system I designed separately).
[–] 1718627440 4 days ago
[–] saidnooneever 3 days ago
i recognise this. i do pen and paper still but i do also write bugs. when i do i try to make test programs to learn why, and ideally recognise where my pen and paper whent wrong, because those are gaps in my real understanding of how my language, the program or interactions with its environment and platform really work. Needless to say i always find myself having lots to learn still :). i think in reality only once or twice i wrote a program truly free of bugs. relatively trivial programs ofc (simple socket client/server with basic binary protocol or so. easy to reason about, no complex sync or threading requirements).
i never use syntax highlighting. one day someone told me it was very distracting, i turned it off and suddenly things were calm. Maybe its just taste but i do find it helpful. you really read stuff rather than assuming some color happening means its correct or incorrect subconsciously
It helps me to print it in a different font/color and without syntax highlighting to force my brain to read it as new code, instead of simply assuming it's the same as I already know.