Hey G4A --
That's... interesting. Your former sponsor sounds like he has some rather rigid personal traditions he's added to the original 12. There is certainly a level of importance placed on writing out the first three steps that I've experienced -- both as an alternative to simple reading/meditation/prayer on them and to a lesser extent, as an alternative to getting more "advanced" and using a computer.
You may want to repost this in the 12-step forum; I personally would like to hear some take on this over there. When I started in on my fourth step, its basis in column work made it natural for me to start working in a spreadsheet. I never got any sort of pushback from my sponsor outside of lighthearted ribbing and bemusement. As we continued working and got through to Step 10 and I learned about spot and daily inventories, he did convey to me the power of simply putting pen to paper and drawing out columns -- sometimes before even working them through -- a level of insight is obtained. So point being that we worked together, learned a bit from each other, and now my practice has both tools to utilize.
I may have my first sponsee this week. If he's ready and willing to honestly start the work, I don't care if he uses pens, crayons, an iPhone, or a quill.