Using an Engineering Notebook

Re:Using an Engineering Notebook by rtpg on Thursday February 12, 2026 @12:21AM (#46985163)

> It mentions writing down in the notebook before writing code, but I can't test my notes, I can't really send my notes for code review.

I think generally it's more about sketching the high level structure of the code. I will routinely write things like :

  documents = ...
  by_client = documents.group_by(client)
  for client, doc_set in by_client:
     for doc in doc_set: csv.write(doc)

Not at all following the actual APIs I use, but I can fill in the blanks when getting the code in place.

The above is very simple, of course, usually I'm working through something where I just want to play through what pieces of data I might or might be missing

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Re:Using an Engineering Notebook by theshrike79 on Thursday February 12, 2026 @02:21AM (#46985772)

I've tried that, but my brain is just going "why are you writing about doing the thing instead of, you know, DOING THE THING"?

I vastly prefer just making a working skeleton and filling that with actual code as I progress.

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Re:Using an Engineering Notebook by rtpg on Thursday February 12, 2026 @06:15PM (#46996650)

Shrug, to be honest if you don't understand the value of sketching out certain problems it's probably because you're not working on anything particularly difficult.

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Re:Using an Engineering Notebook by theshrike79 on Friday February 13, 2026 @02:27AM (#46999919)

Nah, sketching is fine. Sometimes I draw boxes and lines between them to clarify things, mostly to others. It's all clear in my head.

I need a fast feedback loop for the way my brain works, spending too much time on not-working will just confuse me further.

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