Project outlines?

[Shintaro]

Hi,


I was wondering what software or process people use to get their ideas worked out, so that you know where to start.


The reason I ask is that I have some simple ideas for projects, but I either lose the darn paper or get distracted and 3 days later I am starting again, losing the original epiphany.



I find with no set direction, I am procrastinating, and as such F-all gets accomplished.


Cheers.

[NoCforMe]

If I understand your question correctly, my method of working out problems is with pencil and paper. Usually drawing pictures rather than writing text, mapping out data structures, etc. Sometimes just seeing doodles and boxes on paper helps me to crystallize what's needed in the code.

Yes, losing the damn paper, constant problem. My goal (still unrealized) is to have one notebook for this purpose to narrow down the search.

I suppose you could come up with some kind of computer tool for this, but I don't think it would come close to the ease and spontaneity of just scribbling pictures and diagrams.

[Shintaro]

I have tried the notebook, but lost the notebook. Or the kids make their additions / remove pages.

It gets worse, I would work on code for days and somehow lose it. I eventually got around that by using MS Visual Source Safe on a server and then backing up the DB to the cloud.

Way back in the 1990's when I did software Engineering at University we used Enterprise Architect.

But that is expensive and is overkill for my simple requirements.

[jj2007]

No paper here, it's all in my head (and I know I should use paper, it's the better method).

I am a procrastinator with a dozen unfinished projects. What helps me is a 26 items mru (most recently used files) list, where I see all those unfinished project when I click the Files menu. Right now my project is to eliminate that 26 files limit, and make the mru searchable

[daydreamer]

Yes, losing the damn paper, constant problem. My goal (still unrealized) is to have one notebook for this purpose to narrow down the search

Now when some days it's icy, I use padded laptop bag,inside it tablet padded bag with tablet and 4 color pen (blue,black,red,green) and a4 notebook
I back up what I written use tablet to photo
Sometimes I open up skeleton.txt in text editor and write code or only pseudocode

Older tablet is equipped with pen,Photoshop touch and few editors I can write with pen, so i can draw things on it instead
One editor function is try to scan text drawed with pen to computer text

[hutch--]

It sounds like a problem of sharing a development computer with anyone else. Now you could probably solve the problem by having a hard disk in a USB can that you plug in when you want to work on software and unplug it when you are finished. This does involved not letting anyone else use the HDD in the can. It would not even need to be a big HDD, a 1 gig HDD is really hard to fill up with your own code.

Once you have a safe place for your development, you develop your own set of rules (if you need them) and lay out a system where you write notes in either text files or plenty of comments in source code. If you need a dumping ground for unfinished code, make a directory called something like "archive" and put each unfinished project in its own directory.

[NoCforMe]

I still say that paper is a much better medium for this purpose.

[Shintaro]

I have used Microsoft Visio in the past, so I'll probably just stick to it and just add the file to VSS (Visual Source Safe).
Just so people know there are old versions of Visio on archive.net or other old software sites.
Thanks for your responses, everyone.