<div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 9:21 AM, <<a href="mailto:hendrik@topoi.pooq.com">hendrik@topoi.pooq.com</a>> wrote: <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"> The thing is, there are good writers in both camps. Are there similar phenomena in computer programming? </blockquote><div> I can find similar phenomena within myself (not saying I am a good developer though as that's for others to judge) :) When I am building an application, often times it makes sense to do some upfront requirements, specs, and designs so I have an understanding of what to do.  But there are also situations, most often when tackling an unfamiliar problem domain, writing APIs, I have to first hack a probable solution, than I can eventually evole the solution into something that I like (unfortunately, sometimes that means never). It could be just a habit, but even if I tried to write the API on paper, I found it's not as satisfying as seeing the code actually evolve, as the API written on paper is most likely also wrong since it's my first try (and it's harder to correct the API on paper than on keyboard). This might not be a 100% parallel, but that's what I immediately thought of when reading your msg. Cheers, yc </div></div>