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Comment by jcpst | Hacker News Reader

For me, writing on paper provides insights that I just don’t get from a computer.

Writing outside the lines, doodles and swirls on the edges as I ruminate. Adding geometric borders around certain areas, arrows pointing at important things. Leaning in to add a tiny side-note…

I still always program at work with paper and pen on one side of my keyboard. It’s a bit like a mental clipboard for me. It also gives me another reason to get my eyes off the screen for a bit.

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Interestingly I’ve never found writing helpful. I do better typing out my thoughts and writing samples etc. I’ve really tried because people who find writing useful have such great experiences. I even took copious notes in school because everyone said how useful it was. I never referred to them and eventually stopped and just paid close attention. I don’t whiteboard, I don’t jot down ideas, I am just able to keep things in cache and render them in documents, code, and diagrams. I think different minds work differently.

My challenge with standardized learning models is they work for those they work for, and cut down and ground down those it doesn’t. Then the beneficiaries write the rules for the next generation oblivious to the possibility that their experience isn’t the only one. I really struggled in American public school which is rife with learning style assumptions. I really hope a time comes when neurodiversity is accepted in public education, but until then I’ll keep sending my daughter to a private school that adopts a differentiated teaching style.

That's such a cool thing the way you describe it. I honestly wish I was that way. But for me, my most direct connection to expressing thought is a keyboard connected to a capable text editor. I remember trying to take notes by hand in college, and finding that it was easier for me to type in org-mode (mainly so I could write equations in latex, but not deal with latex outside of that).

I've never been a person who doodles. I may underline or highlight, but that's about it. I keep trying hand journaling and handwritten note taking. I'm not particularly slow or sloppy, but it just doesn't click the same way as the keyboard.

I guess the grass is always greener, isn't it?

It's been a few years since I had to deal with a coworker who likes to draw random stuff on a board or a piece of paper, insisting that it is essential for everyone to watch. I never do, as I have learned that guys like this consistently provide the worst explanations because they tend to focus on their drawings, which they like.

I realise this isn't what you said, of course. Maybe you don't do this.

I wonder what actually moving your hand to draw the characters does for the brain and associating the characters meaning. I definitely feel writing by hand is more intimate and it’s easier to think, but I’m a lot slower to write and my hand cramps often.

This is the niche that the ReMarkable tablett is trying to fill - all* of the interface benefits of paper, and all* of the syncing/etc benefits of digitization.

I don't personally own one, but one thing that the ReMarkable tablet fails to do is replicate the speed of flipping through paper. It's still somewhat slow.

This. I own one and it's sooo slow and hard to go back and forth.

To read a novel or to write some things it is nice but still so slow to find something.

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