[schwurb]

What you are doing is prototyping. Which is a good thing. However, writing stuff down is also another form of prototyping, which different tradeoffs.

With coding, you are confined to formal syntax and semantics, but if the code (even partially) works, you can be more confident in your design.

With paper, you can plan as high-level as you want, with the danger of being too highlevel and overlooking things.

[ChrisMarshallNY]

Well, we're veering off into the weeds. The OP mentioned simply thinking about something, for a few weeks, before writing any code. They didn't mention anything about writing stuff down.

I cut my teeth, in the days when we were supposed to design the entire program; from start to finish, on a pad of paper, hand it to a data entry clerk, who would then create a deck of cards, based on the work.

It would then be scheduled for an expensive slice of time, and, if it screwed up, you got spanked.

It sucked. It really sucked.

Full disclosure: by the time I entered the field, punchcards had been replaced by VT-100 terminals and line printers, but the process was still the same, minus the data entry clerk.

These days, it's totally freewheeling. I try stuff out, screw up, kick myself, then try again.

I write about how I do stuff, here: https://littlegreenviper.com/miscellany/thats-not-what-ships...