I've worked with people who are skilled developers and who can't even touch type. They have a slow-pace, methodical way of working. Many look at the keyboard over glasses and hunt and peck. The professor who ported plan 9 to raspberry pi (recent video here) is an example of this approach.
On the other hand, I have a shocking memory and can't hold context for long. Sometimes I come to write a piece of code and find that I wrote it last week and can't remember a thing about it.
I work by crashing through. I stalk the problem, procrastinate, drink tea, write short essays about what's stopping me from getting started. Eventually I get the whole problem in my head, and then need to get it down and done before I get tired. When I'm in this state and I need to solve a problem that I could use a standard library function for, often I'll just hammer out code to make the problem go away (list comprehension, string manipulation and the like) in order not to cause any extra load on my short term memory or distraction. Raw typing speed is very important. A drop in pace would hurt a lot.
Have you tried literate programming? It is a way to download your thought process into the "code". Particularly good for those who like to write.
An example tool to create it is my own program at https://github.com/jostylr/literate-programming which uses markdown as the syntax. While the examples are web language-flavored, it can be used with any language.
I've worked with people who are skilled developers and who can't even touch type. They have a slow-pace, methodical way of working. Many look at the keyboard over glasses and hunt and peck. The professor who ported plan 9 to raspberry pi (recent video here) is an example of this approach.
On the other hand, I have a shocking memory and can't hold context for long. Sometimes I come to write a piece of code and find that I wrote it last week and can't remember a thing about it.
I work by crashing through. I stalk the problem, procrastinate, drink tea, write short essays about what's stopping me from getting started. Eventually I get the whole problem in my head, and then need to get it down and done before I get tired. When I'm in this state and I need to solve a problem that I could use a standard library function for, often I'll just hammer out code to make the problem go away (list comprehension, string manipulation and the like) in order not to cause any extra load on my short term memory or distraction. Raw typing speed is very important. A drop in pace would hurt a lot.