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What he is describing is basically an engineering notebook. I prefer paper, even for software, it just seems more natural to me. Plus I can easily add sketches and diagrams then.

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/General_Engineering_Introductio...

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I used to keep my design/debugging notes on paper too, but the ability to use "grep" on years worth of notes convinced me to switch to plain-text files. (I still use paper for sketches and diagrams, since I haven't found any software that's anywhere near as good as paper for drawing.)

I've been contemplating seeing how well OCR can handle my handwriting. Fill a notebook, cut the spine off, feed it through a scanner and start a new notebook. That way I get diagrams, and the feel of writing on paper, but I can also grep.

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