In 1992 for my final pre-exams deliverable at uni I wrote the entire program text (in Pascal) out on pen and paper overnight, fuelled by cheap lager and Red Bull. Queued at the door waiting for the lab to open in the morning, then typed the lot in and was delighted to discover not only no syntax errors, but no bugs. Ran it, took a few screenshots, printed them and the listing, delivered it to my tutor and went to the pub.
To this day I swear by pen and paper — not for actual code any more, but most specs/designs/flowcharts/pseudocode, and absolutely all meeting and personal notes. I highly value the focus which comes from not being distracted by the quality/features/font/customisation/whatever of some device/app/workflow du jour.
I can readily agree with this approach. My handwriting is... suitable for a doctor at best, so a word processor is pretty important to me when it comes down to implementation, but I've had so many problems just melt away in the face of a pencil and a good graph or summary.
I remember Jolt Cola [0] which was a super-caffienated cola drink, which I drank in the late 80s/early 90s when it was available in the UK (at least I found it in Edinburgh and Glasgow) from a few select delis that did US imports. Apparently a hacker staple in the USA, which is why we searched for it here...
I remember being surprised when I first regularly visited in 99 that red bull wasn’t well known in the US; it was readily available in the UK at that time.
exact same year, in pascal also, I did the same thing for an assignment implementing an embedded multitasking mini OS. I was so exicited at the idea of making my own multitasking system I went home and coded it all on paper. Went in to the lab the next day, coded it in, and it worked straight away with only a few minor issues.
To this day I swear by pen and paper — not for actual code any more, but most specs/designs/flowcharts/pseudocode, and absolutely all meeting and personal notes. I highly value the focus which comes from not being distracted by the quality/features/font/customisation/whatever of some device/app/workflow du jour.