Whiteboards. They're pretty great.

It's my New Year's resolution to be a bit more positive this time around the Sun, and to do that, I've been playing around with just taking a moment to appreciate some of the simple things I love about living on this little blue dot we call Earth, and the first of these things that I'd like to talk about is simple.

Whiteboards. The ultimate human tool for problem solving. Big, small, but seemingly infinite possibilities for breaking down a problem into diagrams, equations, bullet points. Dramatic statement, I know! Yet, it's true.

For me, the whiteboard is the engineer's counterpart to the mathematician's chalkboard, the artist's sketchbook, a writer's notebook. A whiteboard presents the opportunity to begin the problem solving process in a visual, communicable form.

A whiteboard represents an idea that is being actively worked on, in a form that few other tools can replicate. Simple lines of red, blue, black, and green, or occasionally other colours if you're the fancy type that doesn't purchase the first 4 pack of markers you see. In an instant, ideas can be reworded, redrawn, reformulated, cleanly, simply, with just a wipe.

Once an idea is fully formed, you can transcribe it into a permanent form, the ink on the whiteboard is inherently temporary. This is not a downside, but a major advantage. Until an idea is finished, completed, made into a permanent form, it's able to be reworked with no effort, no loss.

But why not a chalkboard? Well, for starters, it's a lot more rare to find a good-quality chalkboard and chalk. There's stories of mathematicians hoarding a specific brand of chalk, and for good reason, as if you're not careful, you end up with a stick that crumbles into powder before so much as leaving a mark! Not the case with a whiteboard! Buy yourself a marker and some wipes, and you're off to the races!

Plus, there's the benefit of often creating much clearer lines than chalk, in a way that's more displayable than something like a notebook or sketchpad, which is often more intended for the view of a single person.

What makes whiteboards the ultimate tool, however, is how they can be used to collaborate. A picture tells a thousand words, even a crudely drawn one in temporary ink. Nothing is easier than passing the marker to the next person to think of something, or to change a detail with a simple wipe.

In fact, I love whiteboards so much that I often have to find alternatives when one isn't available. This can range from tabletop surfaces after an exploratory poke and wipe to make sure the ink comes off, battle mats from tabletop RPGs, mirrors, and windows!

My alternatives have even stemmed to the aluminium clad walls during my first "proper" job, in a food production factory, where I often stood in an alcove off to the side of the production floor, inscribing a spreadsheet to calculate the optimal onion count for each day's needs, causing my manager to stop and ask if I were having a stroke. I was not. I was problem-solving, and yes, it made me much faster.

However, the poor whiteboards' name has been marred, thanks to the whiteboard interview, a parlor trick for prospective programmers to prance before possible professions. Often misused, but beyond the scope of the positivity of this article.

Although, if you ask me, the only real problem with whiteboards is you never seem to have enough to hand. And the fact that whiteboard paint is more expensive than chalkboard paint, hence my bedroom chalkboard wall.

So in short, if you want to increase your engineering team's productivity, or need a gift idea for that nerd in your life: get them a whiteboard.