Hacker News Reader

Comment by cyphar | Hacker News Reader

Pencil and paper is much better for me for making quick notes to be honest. I actually don't like writing my brain dumps on a computer because it makes it harder for me to think about them. I find that physically using a pencil helps me develop my ideas more because I have to reiterate what I'm writing while writing it. It's definitely a personal preference, maybe it comes from the fact that I always draw things on paper when designing them and always do working out for Physics and Maths problems on paper. When I go to write it in a file, it always feels more official and like a proper document than just scribbles.

View on HN

The problems with paper notes are poor searchability, linking, extracting/copying of data, and portability.

But yes, there are advantages to paper, like the ability to easily draw diagrams and link ideas with arrows, etc.

On the other hand, if you need that, you could always use something like a Wacom tablet, or maybe some other touch-screen device with a stylus. That would give you the best of both worlds.

Or the worst of both worlds?

Wacom tablet/touch screen+stylus have same problem of poor searchability. (Assuming that you are suggesting "drawing" digitially, as opposed to on paper)

Are there tools that will let the user search "hand drawn" digital image ? One can always use tag like system, which one can't with paper, but then it is extra work, and adding "text" tags is easier when using something like org-mode, or just plain text.

I wasn't arguing that digital drawings wre searchable, but that typed text was.

Still, there are ways to make drawing somewhat searchable too.

The (typed) names of the drawings you make are searchable, as are the tags (if you've used any, and you should), and their location on your filesystem. If there's some writing on the same page as the drawing, that's potentially OCR'able, and then searchable. Finally, you could always combine drawings with typed text, wich will be searchable.

Personally, if I am dumping thoughts out, keyboard and screen works well, especially if it's text heavy and long (like a blog post or story chapter). On the other hand, if am trying to understand something, I prefer a pencil and paper and writing it down and perhaps drawing things makes me understand it better.

I guess it depends on what /kind/ of brain dump it is. I usually like writing up blog posts on a computer too. But for jotting down "things I did today" and "list of things to do tomorrow", it feels much more natural to write it down. But that's probably my research student genes coming out (my supervisors gave me a book on my first day and said "WRITE EVERYTHING DOWN" -- and I guess it's stuck with me for the past year or two).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com