I use a paper A5 atom notebook. You can easily rip out pages and rearrange them. I mostly use it for quick todos, db relation schemas and writing down some logic.

I do take some notes with Apples Notes but I periodically clean them out. I don't see the benefit in keeping old notes. If a project is done the notes are also deleted / trashed.

Why do people keep their 5 year old notes anyway? From a IT programming perspective anything that old is probably out date and not relevant.