How can I improve my programming skills with out a computer (or reading material)?

Posted by Tom Duckering on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Tom Duckering
Published on 2010-04-21T12:15:00Z Indexed on 2010/04/21 12:33 UTC
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subjective

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fun

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learning

Given the recent and continued chaos with grounded flights and folks stuck in airports, and what not, I'm wondering if anyone has any suggestions for activities that would help sharpen and develop a progammer's mind.

The constraints are:

Laptop is out of battery and there are no free sockets.
You're bored of the book you're reading or you have none with you.

Reasonable resources such as a pen and pad of paper are available. Rules can be bent within reason.

As daft examples, things I have thought about are:

How I might optimise the boarding of a plane.
How I might improve the UI of a departure board.

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