<i>&gt; But I do think coding and thinking through problems on paper is a valuable skill. One neat thing it allows you to do is to go to a different place than the one you type things at to go think deeply about problems, because it&#x27;s a lot more portable than a laptop.</i><p>Drawing the problem is also useful because it focusses 
different parts of your brain on the problem. If the problem was easy to solve with just the more linear textual parts, you probably could just have sat down and coded it.<p>But if that&#x27;s not enough, engaging the visual and spacial parts can help you understand the solution without being able to verbalise it (ie code it) yet.