Ask HN: How many programmers out there keep a paper notebook for their projects?

Your grandfather probably came from a shop where engineers were encouraged or required to write <i>everything</i> down as they discovered problems and worked on solutions. Those notes became critically important when the patent applications were started. Some larger companies even provided nice leather-bound blank books for the engineers to use and keep on their shelves for later reference.<p>Capturing ideas and visualizing your problems is something they don&#x27;t teach you in IT school. Over my career I&#x27;ve leaned that an on-hand notebook is <i>way</i> more useful than carrying a laptop around. I can sketch out ideas, graph out signals, and do dozens of other things quickly and silently. It&#x27;s a lot less intrusive in meetings. Plus, you can doodle.<p>I&#x27;ve used everything from pocket steno books to college spiral notebooks. Moleskines are nice, but way too expensive.<p>My current go-to notebook is a college notebook I picked up in Germany for a couple of Euro. It&#x27;s the right size (not a toy steno book and not a massive 8x10 binder). Side-spiral bound is critical, you can fold it open on a desk without taking up twice the space. Grid paper is killer for mapping out things out. A nice touch is the microperfed edges.<p>Looks like they&#x27;re on Amazon but in packs of 5. Still, not a bad deal:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.co.uk&#x2F;Landre-100050630-Wood-Free-Perforated-Tear-Out&#x2F;dp&#x2F;B00KL49JZC" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.amazon.co.uk&#x2F;Landre-100050630-Wood-Free-Perforat...</a>

I keep notebooks still for most things. I use them to jot down ideas, sketch out designs and just generally write down my thoughts so I don&#x27;t forget them, I usually have one to many per company and one per project. I also use them to take notes in meetings versus trying to take notes on my computer in real time. Personally, I find it pretty rude to be typing away on a computer while people are presenting or we are discussing ideas. It seems far less rude to jot down notes on paper and then come back to it an flush things out after the meeting.<p>I do translate my notes as I work through the problems and put them in a tool like OneNote or Evernote etc. But I always start off with sketches and notes in a notebook. My bet is if you looked at the pattern of those who use notebooks vs those who don&#x27;t, you&#x27;d find those of us using notebooks still skew to an older average age. 40ish+ likely.<p>Personally, I also jot down pseudo code on paper to get my thoughts right before starting to code the problem. This lets me get my thoughts straight before coding it and I find I make fewer mistakes, plus I am faster when I do this. It is also one of the reasons I dislike coding interviews where someone wants you to just start writing code in the IDE. I don&#x27;t do that well, because to me the process is, understand the problem, design the solution, engineer the solution, then start coding.

I use a Hipster PDA.<p>Step 1: get 3&quot;x5&quot; (~8cm x 12cm) index cards. They can be ruled, gridded, blank, colored, whatever. Step 2: Get a binder clip. Step 3: Clip the cards together.<p>It&#x27;s pretty easy to get index card storage bins, and it&#x27;s convenient to take around a little stack in your pocket. If you have a lot of cards, a rubber band works almost better than a clip, but it works better with fewer cards. There&#x27;s a lot of templates you can print onto cards, but I usually just use gridded &#x2F; blank cards for code ideas. An added bonus is, you can rearrange cards with different functions to help structure out code ideas. Or you can print out code, cut out relevant bits, and glue them onto cards.<p>I tend to manage task lists&#x2F;todos, mind mapping, and pseudo-code on cards. Very handy on long bus rides.

I keep a notebook. I use it to take finer grain notes about tasks than can be expressed on a ticket. Also whenever I am going through an unfamiliar codebase I take hand written notes . I know there are a few iPad apps that are effectively an infinite whiteboard but I like to handwrite stuff.

I sketch design elements&#x2F;components, sometimes structures, various lists very rarely pseudocode. I prefer to write down ideas which have to be realized, instead of jumping straight to realization (pseudocode).<p>I don&#x27;t have boxes of notebooks, but I do have couple of small shelves filled with years of notebooks. From time to time I like to go through that stuff - it&#x27;s actually very interesting to see your though process from years ago. Besides notebooks I have small binder filled with hundreds of post it notes for projects which I store.<p>Overall I vastly prefer handwritten notes for projects than some kind of digital notes. It&#x27;s easy to open page for the recent feature, easy to see what you have in mind, how something should be done or what should be considered. ON the same page I could have multiple &quot;data structures&quot;: reminders, lists, summaries and descriptions which easily show state of the progress for project&#x2F;feature.<p>I very much like Moleskin-type notepads with dot-grids with around 100 pages. I have 2 notepads - one for work and one for personal projects.

I use a composition notebook for each large project. I&#x27;m a consultant so I also put notes from client meetings in it as well as sketches, ideas, and calculations especially those of a visual nature.

I use one of these: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;shopping.netsuite.com&#x2F;s.nl&#x2F;c.ACCT126734&#x2F;it.A&#x2F;id.5&#x2F;.f" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;shopping.netsuite.com&#x2F;s.nl&#x2F;c.ACCT126734&#x2F;it.A&#x2F;id.5&#x2F;.f</a><p>My job is half hardware&#x2F;firmware so I put a lot of meeting notes, specs, and calculations in it.

I use paper a lot, but no notebook. What I find disturbing with them is the mixing of different projects stuff. Also I prefer to have a lot of space for drawing.<p>That&#x27;s why I use blank gridded A4 paper sheet. Then I put together project related notes. If a project starts to be big enough, it will naturally lead to a pack of papers that I can carry along. Otherwise the project can kind of fade away be laying around or being mixed with other sheets.<p>I mainly draw application architecture and app screens. I also tend to note in natural language problem related to those. So this is design notes. For technical notes about deployment for example, I use One Note.

My company issues standard notebooks to every employee. A manager &#x2F; former systems engineer retired last week after ~30 years and had 50 or so of these notebooks on his shelf.<p>I&#x27;ve been going back and forth lately between keeping notes in a Markdown file on a shared drive and using my notebook. The Markdown file is much better for searching and ease of access (I&#x27;m on 4 or 5 different computers around the office during a week), but for some unknown reason I keep going back to pencil and paper to sketch things out. When I had to do some light mathematical derivations it was all on paper though.

I was searching for exactly the same stuff yesterday, and I found this:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;lifehacker.com&#x2F;five-best-paper-notebooks-1157038442" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;lifehacker.com&#x2F;five-best-paper-notebooks-1157038442</a><p>I usually keep notebooks, but I am ever more convinced of using one because of Rich hickey&#x27;s talk: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;f84n5oFoZBc" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;youtu.be&#x2F;f84n5oFoZBc</a><p>and we have a better chance of remembering something if we write than type. <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;lifehacker.com&#x2F;5738093&#x2F;why-you-learn-more-effectively-by-writing-than-typing" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;lifehacker.com&#x2F;5738093&#x2F;why-you-learn-more-effectively...</a>.<p>I have previously read that people like Martin Gardner had an awesome system of keeping notes. I would love to know more about your tips.<p>How do keep your notes? How do you organize stuff, while retaining the freedom to doodle. How do you find stuff again(which is the killer feature for typed notes). Would love to learn from the masters - do you have any books to recommend?

I use notebooks for general notes, ideas, sketches, todo lists. Also make notes on stuff that I finally gotten to work, e.g. scripts, etc.<p>Early in a project I use a pre-punched pad and file the pages into a ring binder, under categories, topics. Once the project is well underway, I tend to use those pages to write up the detailed documentation in files which are stored in the same directory hierarchy as the source and other files.

I was a habitual moleskine user, I think I have about 30-40 filled ones sitting in a closet somewhere.<p>But about 3 years ago, I bought a Samsung Galaxy note 8.0. Because it has a pen.<p>I had the original iPad, and a stylus, but you either try to write with your finger (no good) or use a stylus (write holding someone else&#x27;s finger) and it sucked big time.<p>But with the Note, and actually the stock S-Note app, I had everything I needed - nice size, pressure sensitive pen - plus extra benefits: I like to diagram out stuff, draw circles and squares and link between them, and the old version of S-Note has a great feature where I can draw a crappy circle, and it will automagically turn it into a perfect circle. Same deal with squares and lines.<p>So now I use it exclusively, have my ~200 notebooks backed up in various places, native form, image and pdf.<p>Shame though, it looks like it is going to be EOL&#x27;d. I am seriously considering buying a bunch of spare parts to mke sure that I can keep mine running for a while.<p>But to sum up: best of both worlds - like writing on paper, but with the convenience of all that is digital.

I take A4 paper from the printer, cut it in half (making A5), and clip it together with a large bull-clip at the top left.<p>Discard pieces of paper when done, or file them (or scan&#x2F;photo) when need to retain. Can discard in groups, creating small folders, clipped together with other bull-clips.<p>A never-ending, revolving notebook.

I have always used lined note pads at work, for meeting notes and task lists.<p>At home, I&#x27;ve always used large, letter-sized books of drawing paper. I have about 10 of these filled with diagrams and notes, mostly for 3D engines and games I&#x27;ve worked on in the last 15 years.

I&#x27;m doing a PhD in computer science and use a notebook religiously.<p>I couldn&#x27;t imagine life without it.

Guidelines for using an engineering notebook.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bookfactory.com&#x2F;special_info&#x2F;engr_notebook_guidelines.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bookfactory.com&#x2F;special_info&#x2F;engr_notebook_guidel...</a>

I have a notebook that I keep various important thoughts in. It&#x27;s only semi-organized, and it&#x27;s not dedicated to a specific project, but many project notes are kept in it. I think this is a habit that I retained from my time in the Marine Corps. Pen and paper just has a certain feel to it - when I&#x27;m completely focused on my thoughts, it&#x27;s much less distracting to dump right into the notebook rather than into a phone or a computer. One time I misplaced my notebook for about a week and it was a rough time.

I always have a pen and paper notebook on my left when I program. It is super useful to have the swap space. I always take notes so that I can remember what was agreed on, especially action items.

I use a paper notebook to sketch out diagrams and sometimes make todo lists. I like to use the notebook during useful meetings too, I feel like it&#x27;s less distracting than a computer.

I like to use a notebook for random thoughts, todo lists, and diagrams. Taking notes on paper in meetings helps me commit important details to memory and having them all in a book keeps me more organized.<p>I used to always buy Moleskine notebooks but have switched to Forestry Suppliers #49352 field book. It is a combo of ruled and graph paper and intended for surveyors, but it is a nice mix for developing software as well.

I use paper for random notes or to work out the flow of logic or data that&#x27;s a little too hard to do entirely in my head, but other than it being naturally more or less chronological, I don&#x27;t do any further organization.<p>I usually don&#x27;t need to refer to those notes for more than a few days after I write them, so it&#x27;s usually not much more than an archive of thoughts.<p>I try to digitize some of it, but I don&#x27;t do that enough.

I keep some paper notes especially when sketching out visual UI aspects before trying to implement them. But I keep <i>extremely detailed</i> text files for each ticket as I&#x27;m working on it as well. It helps my pick up right where I left off and to find something that was thorny if I need to work with it again a few months later.

I do, but never manage to find a way of keeping them usefull in the long term. I write some stuff related to current tasks or random thoughs but after a couple of days they become irrelevant and several unrelated projects get mixed.<p>Any ideas about how to organize notes?

For balance, I try my hardest to be completely paperless! I prefer having my notes searchable on a computer.