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TIL that writing out my code by hand on paper actually helped me debug faster than staring at the screen
I always rolled my eyes when people said to trace your code on paper, it sounded like busywork from a textbook. But after spending two hours stuck on a nested loop in my little Python to-do list app, I grabbed a notebook and wrote the loop out line by line. Turns out I had my counter incrementing in the wrong spot, and I spotted it in about four minutes once it was on paper instead of glowing at me. Now I keep a cheap spiral notebook next to my keyboard. Does anyone else do this, or am I just slow at reading my own code on a screen?
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ward.fiona23d ago
Funny thing is I learned this the hard way too, except my version involved printing out a 400 line file and spreading it across the kitchen table like I was doing taxes. My husband walked by and asked if I was writing a novel, and honestly the outline of my nested if statements looked like a bad poem. Writing it by hand forces your brain to slow down, which is the whole point, since on a screen your eyes just skip over the bug like it's invisible. My spiral notebook is full of arrows pointing to the wrong variable now, and it works better than any debugger I have tried.
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