
How I got a CS degree with pen and paper and why I'm doing it again - forrestbrazeal
http://forrestbrazeal.com/2015/09/16/taking-notes-in-class-dont-use-your-laptop/
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DawkinsGawd
Disappointed. I thought the article was going to focus on why a computer isn't
even necessary for a computer science degree. In other words - how a computer
science degree is mostly just a degree in mathematics, and a lot of the coding
that you do (algorithm work, obviously not a software engineering or
programming intensive course) should be done with pencil.

I have been seeing a lot of articles claiming that a barrier to CS curriculum
in high school is that they don't have the technological capabilities to
support such curriculum. Nonsense. If I ran an AP computer science class we
would never touch a computer. Pencil and paper only.

~~~
vvanders
Never?

That sounds like a sure way to make sure any students who took that class
would be very disengaged.

~~~
dsp1234
I did my first programming with pencil and paper, and I'm still engaged 30+
years later

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vvanders
We're talking about high school here though. Seems to me it would be like
running a chemistry class without doing any lab work.

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rondsquare
Not trying to be argumentative or anything, but that's how chemistry is taught
in 3rd world countries. Labs are a luxury :)

~~~
vvanders
Eh fair, although RPi Zeros are pretty cheap these days :).

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jwdunne
Interesting article. I can touch type but I prefer pen and paper for to do
lists, mind maps, exploring problems and note taking. It's always seemed more
"effective" than using a computer or my phone - even crossing off a task feels
better.

I always assumed this was because I engage more areas of the brain. I'm
excited to find the real reason so the research is now on my to-read list.

~~~
yodsanklai
> I always assumed this was because I engage more areas of the brain

Or could it be just because it's still hard to draw things and write formulas
using a computer.

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jwdunne
In fairness, in my own notes, formulas are rare. The only thing close to
drawing in my notes is a spider diagram and MindNode is probably a lot easier
and friendlier than pen and paper for that.

I can probably cover my ground in Photoshop than I can on paper too.

Pen and paper just seems to make things 'sink in'. Feels a bit different to
being hindered by the tool of choice!

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inanutshellus
Misleading title - He took class notes using a notebook instead of a laptop.

I dared to hope to find some absurd story about turning in his CS homework in
hand-written C++...

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Retr0spectrum
I'm doing an Electronics A Level, and we have to hand write code in a
fictional assembly dialect.

~~~
jon-wood
Good to see they haven't updated the curriculum since I did it fifteen years
ago!

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meshko
This article just made me feel like i am 70. Thanks. Also:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Feeling_of_Power](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Feeling_of_Power)

~~~
strictnein
Same. Mid 30s, no one used laptops to take notes when I was in college.
Somehow we all survived.

~~~
sevensor
Also mid 30s, just wrapped up an engineering Ph.D at a major state research
university. It wasn't CS, but still quite technical. Never once did I see
classmates use laptops for taking notes. Maybe it was just my department, but
we were pen and paper all the way. I'm a bit astonished that taking notes on a
laptop is even a thing. It seems incredibly distracting and ineffective. How
does one draw diagrams or write equations?

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radicality
Pretty much everyone in my university took notes on paper in CS classes. Most
of it was just math which is much easier to note down with pen and paper (I
tried tablets with a stylus but still prefer pen+paper).

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kaybe
The best version I've seen for image-heavy lectures is the lecturer writing
with his pad on half-prepared slides, which have also been given to the
students for print-out.

It combines the advantages from pure slides with pure blackboard writing:

\- The student has enough time to think and not just write (has often been a
problem when the professor is writing very fast and doing complicated stuff).

\- The student still gets to 'touch' the material and have their own take on
it, and writes the critical points and diagrams themselves.

\- There is no fear of missing something in the hand-written notes when as
when deciding between writing and thinking/try to figure out which parts to
note down.

~~~
randycupertino
... and then also record the lecture in case you missed anything else!

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al2o3cr
Better title: "How I decided that a practice that works better for me is
clearly superior to others (and why I'm writing a blog to be smug about it)"

~~~
randycupertino
That could be the title for almost every blog post ever, though.

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cubano
I can't help but think...I got my CP/CS degree with pencil and paper, and the
only computer I used was a timeshared VAX and PDP11 at the university lab, so
I'm not really sure what the big deal is here.

Sure I wrote some code on those systems, but 90% of my work was done with
pencil, papar, and a HP11c calculator.

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LyndsySimon
I took up penmanship as a hobby about a year ago, and now carry fountain pens
and write down most everything I would have previously typed.

It's actually a well-known thing in the fountain pen community that writing
notes instead of typing them aides in comprehension.

~~~
randycupertino
That is awesome. I love that there is a fountain pen community!

~~~
LyndsySimon
There are thousands of us. Check out /r/fountainpens.

There's even an IRC channel listed in the sidebar. There are 25 of us online
right now, and have been as many as 120 or so in the past. Fountain pens are
more popular among IRC users than supervisord, based on channel participation
:)

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foiejapofijw
Misleading title and limited content aside, one sentence stood out to me:

"This wasn’t such a big deal when I was actually doing computer programming
homework, since people who can code at typing speed are pretty rare."

How does everyone else feel about the "rareness"?

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acbabis
Planning your code is part of coding. To truly "code at typing speed", you
would have to do no prep-work or research and type your program beginning to
end with no bugs (see:
[http://www.hackertyper.com/](http://www.hackertyper.com/)). I'd say that's
pretty rare.

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sremani
There are lot of people coming to same conclusion, learning low-tech is
probably best way of doing learning. Because Computers themselves have become
such a distraction, social media or tech journalism etc. There is a story in
the book "Deep Work", where a finance dude Mastered programming (javascript,I
would guess), with a textbook and flashcards.

If this does not change any thing, it should give all us a minute to think,
the mind-numbing was technology is being pushed with a claim for improving
education, but nothing empirical to back it up.

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innertracks
Here's a great resource for taking handwritten note taking to the next level
with doodles/sketchnotes. Sketchnoting is pretty fun and does seem to help
with learning.

[http://sachachua.com/blog/book-accelerate-your-learning-
with...](http://sachachua.com/blog/book-accelerate-your-learning-with-
sketchnotes/)

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forrestbrazeal
I'd be interested also to know what people think about taking notes on a
tablet with a stylus. I've never done this, and I think it could provide some
of the benefits of taking notes on paper, but not all. For example, turning
physical pages and visualizing data in concrete locations would still be more
helpful for me, since I'm a spatial learner.

~~~
zyxley
I've done this for a variety of subjects, and I rather like it... but it
depends on having a very good tablet and a very good stylus (e.g. iPad Pro,
Surface Pro, or so on).

For me there were two key points: it makes it very easy to drop in photos of
slides or diagrams, and it makes it very easy to rearrange page contents after
doing a first pass of ad-hoc notes.

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make3
I'm in my last year in CS in a North American university and most people take
pen and paper notes when they do take notes, and mostly only use their laptops
to read previous slides again in presentations/ waste time on random internet
bs. This article is making a big deal out of nothing out of the ordinary

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tyomero
Hahahaha, this article is funny. This explains why migrants from "the 3rd
world" can take away jobs in "developed" countries ... we took notes with a
pen... not by choice but because most of us could not afford a computer. How
ironic.

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jh3
Taking notes on a computer by itself never really helped me learn. I would
always write down on paper everything I typed on a computer during class.
Doing this would help solidify the lesson in my mind.

