Hey there non-tech friend, what’s that? Your name is Thaddeus… really? Are you sure it’s that. Okay then, guess we'll go with that.

In this blog post, I have been asked to tell a non-tech friend about a time I had to problem solve. Now, I don’t really hang out with “non-tech” people, or fleshies as I believe they are now called, but I’ll be real with you it is almost 8pm on Sunday, I should have written this post on Thursday after I finished the kata but I started building a new website to practice some React and it was a lot of fun but meant that I have put this off until now. And now, yeah now it’s Sunday, I’ve had a massive day and the new season of Selling Sunset is out on Netflix and I just really want to watch that.

But, because you asked, I will tell you about a problem I solved elegantly (read: wearing a tuxedo).

I have faced lots of problems learning to code. The first one, really, was that I genuinely did not know anything about coding when I started teaching myself. I had no idea how websites worked, what a front end or a back end was, honestly I thought the internet was a type of dance.

And, wouldn’t you know it, the more I learned the less I knew!

So I have encountered thousands and thousands of bugs on my learning journey, I've even encountered some in my code! Initially they were mainly just spelling and syntax errors but once I got on top of these, the bugs became increasingly bigger and more terrifying.

At the same time, haphazardly layering in new technology because I was randomly following various tutorials and smashing them into the app I was building means I have an app that features: vanilla JS, some bootstrap, some CSS flex/grid, some jQuery, a whole lotta Django but also some Django Rest Framework (I still don’t even understand this), PostgreSQL, some other crap I just threw in to get it working and a truck load of crossed wires that if I try and refactor even a word the whole thing will collapse.

I love the website, my ugly little first try (although the UI is kinda tight imo - the actual codebase is a dumpster fire), it will always represent the runway I took to get into coding and web-dev!

But wait - what am I talking about? Oh right, yes, bugs. So I have encountered a lot and tbh the most elegant solution I’ve found for any of them is honestly handwriting. Pen and paper. A true classic.

Is there anything more elegant than writing with a pen and paper? Well, yes, of course there is… but even the most elegant people out there write with a pen and paper (probably). Even, like, Coco Chanel would have used a pen and I’ve heard she was pretty elegant!

So solving my problems with a pen and paper really made me feel like Coco Chanel - but also using a pen and paper to solve problems (especially if you do it on like gridded paper in a moleskin diary) in public places makes me look extremely smart, at least I think it does. I swear I keep hearing people around me, as I furiously write out functions and arrays in long hand, “My god, who is that genius!? What cryptographic language is that? Wait… I’m pretty sure that’s Coco Chanel! How do I know? Because look they are using a pen and paper.”

What’s that, Thaddeus, my fleshie, non-tech, friend? You want some hard evidence to understand what there is to gain from using a pen and paper as a problem solving technique besides looking like a fabulous couturier? Well I could tell you that what I learned from my experience using good ol’pen and paper to solve problems was that I found it dramatically easier to think through problems but why believe me? Why not believe the first result from Google (that’s right GOOGLE) when you search “is handwriting better than typing for learning”:

"The results of the study were clear: For the most effective learning and remembering, it was better for students to write or draw by hand versus typing out notes. The researchers deduced this because writing and drawing activated areas of the brain that typing didn’t."

That’s right, by handwriting I activate areas of the brain that typing doesn’t - mainly the ability to pat my head and rub my tummy at the same time - oh and also I can make things float just by thinking, but that could also be quitting caffeine.

Oh did I mention that this expert research comes from none other than… let me see here… Northrup Grumman?!?!?! Don’t they build Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles?! Why on earth would they commission this research?