

Ask HN: When was the last time you printed out code? - dugmartin

I pressed the print button in my IDE this morning by mistake and it occurred to me that I haven't printed out code in years.<p>It didn't used to be that way for me - in the mid 90s I worked in a ISO 9000 certified project that required printed code reviews for everything which resulted in a huge wheeled recycling bin to be placed in the engineering area.<p>Do printed code reviews still happen?  Do you print out code for your own reasons?
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Random_Person
I do very often. I am a spatial learner so I have a much better time
understanding things when I can interact with it physically. If I am going to
restructure something or insert a new function in existing code I will
commonly print it out so I can scan through and physically note how changes
will affect the rest of the code.

I also frequently hit print when learning someone else's code or going back to
something I haven't touched in a while. Being able to physically page through
the code to trace function calls is much easier for me than a bunch of
clicking and scrolling.

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qba
Couple of months ago on a group programming competition ( one computer - three
people). You write your code, if it doesn't work, you print it and another
person sits at the computer to write your code and you munch on yours on a
piece of paper. Maybe it's a bit off topic here, but we also saw it was
sometimes more productive to do it like this with the physicality of the paper
and pen. You can doodle, or visualize data right on the margin. Still I think
it's only usefull in such "academic" problems. You cannot possibly do it with
a multi-file, >1k SLOC project.

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dagw
I still occasionally print out short pieces of code that I'm trying to
understand. Maybe I'm weird, but if I'm trying to work through and understand
some complex function, I still prefer to spread out a bunch of A4's on my desk
and trace through it with a pen and hi-lighter.

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frgtn
Last time I printed code was during my first semester in university. That was
some 5 years ago. We had to prepare printed reports of all our assignments.
Those were dark times.

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SatvikBeri
The last time I printed out code was about a year ago, and was for the purpose
of a code review.

About two weeks ago I decided I'm not going to use paper unless absolutely
necessary. That means no taking notes in a journal, no printing things out for
my own reading, etc. This has forced me to be a lot more creative in using
electronic solutions and has been absolutely worth it.

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devs1010
I don't think I've ever done this, I've only been coding a few years so I
think modern monitors have been good enough.. One thing I have noticed is I
find a lot of devs leave their font at the default size, for a while now I've
been making it a bit bigger and increased the line spacing a bit, I find it
helps me stay focused better

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onlyup
As a 22 year old, I have never printed out code with the exception of handing
in an assignment in university.

I've never even though about printing it out to help me work/understand it.
It's not a bad idea. I might try it the next time I am having code block.

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zerohp
The last thing I printed was the entire source code to XV6 so I could browse
through it at my leisure.

<http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.828/2011/xv6.html>

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leejw00t354
I've only ever had to print code for college and university.

Even then a lot of my university tutors rather code to be submitted on a disk
or by making it network accessible instead.

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cpr
Probably 30 years ago. ;-) Back then I worked for a laser printer start-up
(lots of free printing available), and workstations (Sun, Apollo) were just
appearing with larger screens.

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dugmartin
Now that I think about it I stopped printing out code when monitors got
larger. I think I used to do it because I could only see a small number of
lines at a time.

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calculus
About 6 years ago, and I don't miss it! I still print specs because when
working on a team, it's very handy.

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tersiag
For me the last time was in 2007. And I don't miss it

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ggualberto
I don't remember the last time I've printed out code.

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nantes
Not since my undergraduate years.

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keninglis
enscript -3r -fCourier6 foo.php

You can barely read it but the zigzags are pretty

