If you’ve read any of my other articles, you’ll know what’s coming at this point. That’s right, grab your paper and pencil. It’s time to be a little old school. I’ve always found that if I draw out my plan on paper that it’s easier to code because I know what goes where how it all links together and what type of structure I’m working with. Also, it’s nice once you’ve been working on your project for some length of time to be able to look back on what you’ve already done so that you can easily remember things about your project that you may have forgotten.

Writing down things like declared class names, global variables, function names, and so on really can give you an edge if you get right down to it. Let’s say you have two classes, one named load_interface and one named load_ini, or something, then let’s say you're one of those type of people who will declare a class with a two-letter variable (and I know there are those of you who do it). Well, if you made load_interface three weeks earlier in the same project, and you didn’t use it for all that much, are you really going to remember that you’ve used the $li variable already.. really?

Some people may not. Or, let’s say that you start a project and then you get someone else to help you out after about a week or two. Wouldn’t it be useful to them to know what’s already been used? And would it not help speed up the time it takes them to actually get into the project to start programming?

That just goes to show you -- “paper isn’t just for breakfast anymore” --well, it never was, but I’m just saying there’s more use for paper than letting it jam your printer.