felix_thomas73•9d agoProlific Poster

Saw a kid at the Denver library debugging his first Python script on a paper printout

I was at the Denver Public Library last Saturday killing time and saw this teen sitting at a table with a stack of printed code. He was crossing out lines with a red pen and rewriting them by hand. It blew my mind because I usually just smash F5 over and over. Made me wonder if going old school like that actually helps beginners learn faster. Anyone else ever try debugging on paper before running code?

2 comments

2 Comments

evanfox8d ago

You ever tried doing that with a buddy? My friend Mike learned to code back in 2015 by printing out every single script and marking it up with a red pen. He swore it forced him to really look at the logic instead of just hitting run and hoping. Took him twice as long to fix a bug, but he remembered the fix forever. Felt like ancient monk stuff to me, but it worked for him.

the_henry8d ago

Printing out every script" is wild but @evanfox, did Mike ever try rubber duck debugging?