Coders at Work: Reflections on the Craft of Programming

by Peter Seibel

Seibel: So now that you spend more time thinking before you code, what are you actually doing in that stage? Armstrong: Oh, I'm writing notes—I'm not just thinking. Doodling on paper. I'm probably not committing much to code. If you were to monitor my activity it'd be mostly thinking, a bit of doodling. And another thing, very important for problem solving, is asking my colleagues, “How would you solve this?” It happens so many times that you go to them and you say, “I've been wondering about whether I should do it this way or that way. I've got to choose between A and B,” and you describe A and B to them and then halfway through that you go, “Yeah, B. Thank you, thank you very much.” You need this intelligent white board—if you just did it yourself on a white board there's no feedback. But a human being, you're explaining to them on the white board the alternative solutions and they join in the conversation and suggest the odd thing. And then suddenly you see the answer. To me that doesn't extend to writing code. But the dialog with your colleagues who are in the same problem space is very valuable.