As a programmer we sometimes might look like we are not doing much from the outside but actually we’re dead inside thank you
And this is why I moved to using white boards.
I wish I understood how to use them. I have half written scraps of paper and random text in random text files. Notebooks are about the best I can do. I can’t write very well on a vertical board. It is really really uncomfortable and I end up obsessing on how bad it looks over solving the problem. Sometimes drawing on my iPad instead works, but that is another place to look for things.
I do like using Markdown + Mermaid. Obsidian is a nice little note taking app once I got it configured. It just takes me forever.
They have smaller white boards you can just prop up at a nice angle on your desk. These are what I use. Bigger ones that have to hang are for scheduling because I also black hole anything more than a week away. Also the white board is just off loading my thoughts so people can’t interrupt me so badly. I still use note taking apps for tracking completed thoughts or things I have to come back to.
I find for coding problems it’s actually better to walk away and let it tick over in your mind.
You’ll often get a shower thought type moment.
Nothing more enchanting than when the answer to your coding problem literally comes to you in a dream. Had an array issue in C++ where I literally woke up saying "I don’t need a ghost array to search after all is said and done, it’s already sorted!"
I’ve often been accused of looking angry when I’m thinking about a problem. Of course I’m angry! How dare the solution allude me! 😡
Allude what to you?
Probably alluding to the fact that it’s eluding them 🤷
Maybe “aluding” is because the solution is both eluding and alluring at the same time, so one keeps following its syren song but when you get to where you think the solution is, it’s not there.
Certainly it matches the feeling I got with some of the development problems I’ve faced.
If I intimidate it by staring at it long enough, it’ll work eventually.
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Sometimes the first, then eventually the second when you realize you did it but forgot you did it.
“Ok fine, I’m going to see who committed this atrocity,
git blame, oh crap.”
Wait until she walks in on him explaining the problem out loud to a rubber duck.
Sounds like Feynman’s algorithm.
- Write down the problem
- Think about it really hard
- Write down the solution
Look IDK about math, but I know about programming: “stare at it” is bad advice. Give it a minute or two, then get up and go for a walk or go to bed. Let your subconscious stare at it instead; it’s actually better at this stuff than you are.
If I’m ever staring at math, I’m absolutely not processing visual information while doing so. It’s more that like, I’m staring off into space and thinking and “math on a whiteboard” just happens to be the last thing I was looking at and my face is still pointed that way
Programmers do that a lot? I always just start trying stuff in the command line until it works. It’s in research though, so maybe different from what is typical developer stuff?
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