I Fucking hate white boards. I think the thing I hate the most is that it's impossible to insert lines. When I code, I generally edit all over the place, with a white board you can't do
do that.
doodling writing funny quotes giant reminders meetings schedules announcements
Basically anything you would use a notebook with pen and paper for in order to extend your working memory, but you want to share with others. Definitely not (non-pseudo) code longer than three or four lines.
- simple sketch of a user interface
- technical diagrams, like for showing how a data structure is implemented, or the (basic!) messages sent between client and server, or the architecture of your network
- working out examples, like drawing the chain of events that leads to something breaking due to a bug, or a simple example illustrating what you're saying
- very short code (3 lines good, 10 lines bad)
A whiteboard can be a tool to help you explain things. It should be used to augment what you're saying in words. It's very hard to put a diagram in someone's head using words, but much easier if you can draw on a whiteboard.
You're right, though, that things on a whiteboard should be kept very simple. Lots of code, or very large diagrams, are liable to turn into a mess.
i did that with todo lists. i'd rewrite them multiple times to remove done items and add new ones, and reorder them.