You might think that the mental challenges of creating new functionality, i.e. writing the source code, would be enough for software developers. Their thirst for puzzles is unquenchable, however. It makes their day to have a tough intellectual nut crack. Tick-the-Code produces constantly excellent puzzles for the author, who has to figure out how better, simpler, more understandably to write a piece of code he has already once written. Trying to be better than your old self is as tough a nut to crack as it gets.

Tick-the-Code is a low-tech approach to code review. It is brain-intensive, focus-inducing and counterintuitive. We could even say that it is taking you back-to-basics, to the grass-root level of the source code. Tick-the-Code is heavy as paper and result-driven. It is at times purely mechanical and sometimes heuristic, all the time puzzling and at best creativity-inspiring. Ticking code free from the shackles of technology can be therapeutic and at the same time both arming and disarming. It is all these things and more.

It can be helpful to describe what Tick-the-Code is not. It isn't reactive. You can't automate it and it isn't just for beginners.