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Comment by kiba | Hacker News Reader

So does anybody still use pen and paper outside of school? It seem to me that the entire school supply industry is propped up by old school methods of education.

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I use Moleskin notebooks (go through about 1 a month) full of ideas, drawings, notes, just about anything. I also keep a stack of 4x6 notecards to hash out ideas on paper (1 step below talking them out loud to people).

Try it, it's incredibly effective.

Not to nitpick or anything, but this has turned into a pet peeve of mine recently: it's "Moleskine". Not that I'm a crazed die-hard fan of the notebooks or anything, but they appear to be pretty nice. Maybe I'll try using one soon.

Moleskine user/lover here too. I carry a pocket-sized Moleskine, pen and iPhone almost everywhere I go. It's faster and more enjoyable to write notes in the notebook than in my iPhone (the latter increasingly freezes with iOS 4.0 and even without that has lots of annoying UX quirks), and I can easily go back and forth between text and doodles/diagrams, unlike the iPhone (built-in apps anyway, admittedly.) If you just want the cheapest paper possible, Moleskine is a bad choice. But if you want the best experience as a writer/reader/geek, Moleskine is a no brainer.

I have switched from Moleskine to Piccadilly brand (I think this is the house brand of Borders Books). Half the price, almost the same quality.

The problem with Moleskines is that they got too popular, so they keep switching around the source for their paper; while earlier (circa 2005) Moleskines had paper that fountain pens wouldn't bleed through, later ones of the exact same type do have paper that fountain pens will bleed through.

interesting to know, thanks. I just got into Moleskine a year ago or so. i haven't experienced any bleedthrough with the Pentel ballpoint point I pimped in another comment in this discussion. I think B&N has a store brand they promote too but I haven't tried it yet.

I love fountain pens. I have bunch of Parker 'Vectors' in a diversity of line widths and ink colors.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parker_Vector

The only disadvantage is that the ink stays water-soluble after it dries.

Another fountain pen lover here. I got a Mont Blanc for a 21st birthday present with a gold nib. However I've ran out of ink and haven't gotten round to getting some more.

" It's faster and more enjoyable to write notes in the notebook than in my iPhone"

I'm increasingly writing things down on paper then snapping a pic with my G1.

It's just a handy way to capture stuff that is less likely to get lost.

It's weird. I never found notebooks all that useful until a relative bought me a Moleskine as a gift. I can't put the stupid thing down now, there's definitely some kind of "there" there...a kind of delicious physical quality that makes me want to write stuff in it.

I agree. A couple of years ago, I saw someone here on HN praising Moleskine notebooks. I looked it up, and was perplexed at the high price... for a notebook? But somehow that thought stuck in my head, and a few months later I bought one.

It's great. Nicest thing to write in I've ever owned. I just wish I could explain more precisely why.

It's all the little touches. Apple Mac is to Windows PC's a bit like Moleskine is to regular blah notebooks. The former is for those seeking a quality experience. The latter the cheapest experience.

I did something similar. I gave Moleskines as gifts to two people I know. One said it was the best notebook he's ever had. I'm trying to infect people. I want these things to stay in production this time.

Moleskins are the sketchpad of many a great idea. Even in a note taking situation (college) they work fairly well. Pair them with a Pentel Kerry .05mm HB mechanical thing of beauty and you have a lot going on.

edit for typos

Moleskine + Pentel for the win. same here.

I wrote the first draft of my (unpublished) novel [1] long hand - I don't think there's necessarily a greater 'connection' with my words when I'm writing rather than typing, but I did find it much easier to do (lying on a couch with a laptop isn't as easy) and great for scattering notes (which remain the same size on paper, unlike cascading windows on my screen).

Though I no longer use a pen at work ... I use coloured textas! [2]

[1] http://www.scribd.com/The-Cookie-From-the-Cookie-Jar-2008/d/... [2] http://www.shirlawsonline.com/blogs/136-the-big-picture-show...

I always do my first draft of any nontrivial large system by writing the code out longhand, after having heard it recommended by multiple people I respect. My perception is that the resulting code is cleaner and better documented, and that my error rate has dropped to almost 0.

Writing your code this way encourages a "write as you would speak" tone in the resulting code, better decomposition, and better documentation. It also means that each line gets reviewed from a fresh start at least twice before making it to the computer.

The biggest problem comes when you're working with a large API you don't know well; you're frequently forced to experiment with it in a manner that this sort of batching doesn't really handle well.

I often sketch out code, short stories, or (to me) fleetingly puzzling mathematics with a notepad and pen. Try it. It's the most versatile note-taking system ever devised.

Also, it has the plus-side of being 'interesting'. People are attracted to scribbles they understand them - but crack open your laptop in a pub or cafe and people will assume that you're a rabidly, uninterruptibly busy, professional. And hell, maybe you are, but whose day isn't brightened by someone asking them what they're so engrossed in?

Depoends on what's on the laptop screen. Usually it's someone's 3Q projection analysis spreadsheet or an academic paper about third-wave-feminist semiotics in Madonna music videos (I live near Harvard). If it's Emacs (and it sometimes is; I also live near MIT), I'd be more inclined to say "Hey, whatcha workin' on?"

Writing math is definitely the killer app for me. For some reason I just can't write math on the computer without scribbling it out on paper first. Everything else works, more or less. Maybe it's because I've done so much math on paper already.

Absolutely. I don't write much text with pen and paper, but diagrams, mathematics, music notation... all still much easier for me to do with a pen.

The only way I can outline a good presentation is with a sharpie and sticky notes. One concept per note, you can rearrange them easily, have an idea of what the presentation will flow like, and then turn each concept to a slide.

I'll probably stop doing that once someone writes software that can replicate this workflow and integrates with presentation software.

I had the impression that a large part of Sharpie's market (for their "Sharpie" permanent markers, at least) is marking physical things (writing your name on your coffee cup, for example). I don't see that market going away for a while, at least until absolutely everything is RFID tagged.

Yes, daily. I can't remember the last time I used a pencil, though, 10 years at least.

I do. But I never use anything but a pen, anyways, so I don't see why I'd need this.

Obviously not a real (ie mechanical) engineer. One of the most annoying things is when you are forced to write with a pen (legal reasons) instead of the beloved pencil.

Me. We have a ticket tracking system for customer calls, but I find it's much easier to write out the notes I'm going to enter. Plus, I can do diagrams and charts for the descriptions the customer is giving me.

I take all of my meeting notes on paper, lists of revisions, to-do lists, etc. I go through about one Mead 5-subject notebook a month. I find it far easier than trying to keep track of it all digitally.

uh, I draft plenty of complex code on paper. The code I wrote today was drafted on 5 sheets of a legal pad yesterday.

I've tried to just draft stuff in a text editor but it doesn't work the same.

I keep a pad of graph paper next to my desk with a nice pen. I find it useful to sketch out ideas, data structures, etc. on graph paper since the grid lines help keep things lined up.

I get through at least an index card a day doing pomodoros.

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