For me it&#x27;s both. You&#x27;re trying to visualize the problem, its parts and how they interact, and you may write down some code for specific sub problems because it just popped into your head and you don&#x27;t want to context switch.<p>There&#x27;s a limited amount of things you can keep in your head at once, and the paper is somewhat of a navigational aid and rapid access memory. Paper also offers you a lot of flexibility in regards to laying out things fast and sketching things, which computers still don&#x27;t have quite down yet. If I try to layout my thoughts in emacs or photoshop a lot of my processing power is taken up by the act of using the tool (&quot;ugh, was it M-x rect or M-x rectangular-region&quot;&#x2F;&quot;Let me get the pen tool, and the rectangle tool, and where did the tool tray go?&quot;).<p>Scribbling on a pad doesn&#x27;t just apply to coding though, it&#x27;s a useful technique for a lot of areas that have thorny problems that exceed your local memory capacity.<p>Just my take on the technique.