Ask HN: What are you using to print source code these days? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What are you using to print source code these days?

4 pointsW-Stool7 comments

I was an old school guy who always printed his reams of source code out on a 132 character dot matrix printer - green bar paper, everything. These days this is just not possible. What is the current thinking of printing source code if this is important to you?

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> These days this is just not possible.

Why not?

I still format my code to an 80 column width.

I can still use `pr` to paginate my source for printing, and use `enscript` to produce a PostScript document of it, then `ps2pdf` to convert that to PDF, then I can spool that PDF to any printer.

And, on my home network, I have a HP LaserJet 2300dn and I can actually just shove the plain text output from `pr` straight to the JetDirect port on 9100/tcp.

What exactly is the obstacle that's preventing you from printing out your source code?

Purchasing and using a 132 column dot matrix printer just isn't feasible these days, hence my question.

Very rarely these days do I print source-code.

But on the odd occasions that I do, I print the code with a monospaced font directly to .PDF.

I then transfer that .PDF to a large-format Kindle (like the Scribe).

When I don't need that anymore I delete it from the Kindle, but retain a copy of the .PDF for future use if necessary.

I rarely print out source code. Only when I want to carefully study some tricky code written by others. I use LibreOffice Writer, landscape with suitable sized font. Sometimes I leave space to the side for my scribbling, notes, lines, etc. Print on a laser printer.

Maybe tangential, but what kind of source code did you all print out? Anything memorable? Also, what were the reasons for printing them out?

Also, what were the reasons for printing them out?

Mainly to go through and understand other peoples' code. The beauty of open-source is that you can stand on the shoulders of others. But you have to know what they were doing so that you can see whether it would be suitable for your project, and what changes you would need to make to make that previous code work for you.

('Cut 'n' Paste' does not work. You need to suit the code to the project.)

sometimes you can print academic papers that have pseudocode in them it's like source code pseudocode is basically python anyway

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