All you need for ticking is code on paper, a colorful pen, the rules, some table space and enough light to read and write. You don't necessarily need any electricity. Adding technology to the setup has a tendency to be more harmful than helpful. Let's say you bring in a laptop computer. All kinds of things can go wrong. What if your computer fails to boot or you notice you need a software update? And once you enter the Internet, you can all but forget the idea of a productive meeting with some source code. The Internet distracts you all too easily from your task if you just let it. The distracting power of technological equipment is usually too much to risk taking them into the Inspection Cave. Telephones, pagers, email are all unnecessary sources of interrupts while ticking.

From the material point of view, Tick-the-Code is stripped to the bare essentials. That allows you to focus on the matter at hand, finding rule violations in the source code.

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.