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

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3713299

by dugmartin • 14 years ago

9 16 14 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

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.

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.

Do printed code reviews still happen? Do you print out code for your own reasons?

ggualberto• 14 years ago

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

dugmartin• 14 years ago

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.

qba• 14 years ago

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.

frgtn• 14 years ago

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.

calculus• 14 years ago

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

leejw00t354• 14 years ago

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.

cpr• 14 years ago

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.

dagw• 14 years ago

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.

nantes• 14 years ago

Not since my undergraduate years.

SatvikBeri• 14 years ago

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.

tersiag• 14 years ago

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

Random_Person• 14 years ago

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.

onlyup• 14 years ago

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.

keninglis• 14 years ago

enscript -3r -fCourier6 foo.php

You can barely read it but the zigzags are pretty

devs1010• 14 years ago

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

zerohp• 14 years ago

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

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

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