As a developer, my most important tools are a pen and a notebook

After I signed my contract to join my new job a month ago, I was so excited. Not only that I would join the company but also because I got to buy a new notebook. The weekend before my first day I headed to the local bookstore and spent a good amount of time browsing through the notebooks available and ended up with this happy orange one. Why am I so excited about a notebook then? Because it’s the most important tool I have as a software developer. When it comes to building software or solving problems, writing code is the necessary bit at the end where we tell the computer what to do but way more important than writing that code is figuring out what code to write. I learned very early on in my career that I’m not very good at thinking when I’m at a computer. When I have my code editor open, I’m in a “function mode” where I write stuff that does something. When my brain hits that mode, there’s not much creative energies flowing around. So I often step away from the computer. Someti ... Read full article.