
The software engineering notebook - Winterflow3r
http://winterflower.github.io/2017/08/17/software-engineering-notebook/
======
goo
The commitment to taking good notes has been one of the best decisions of my
life -- not just professionally. I use my standard text editor (Textmate 2),
and have a "notes" project, with all manner of categories organized by folder.
I take notes on articles I have read, take notes on any presentations I watch
or educational courses I take, or books I read. Moreover, I now take much
better in person notes -- I take them into "scratchpads" and then synthesize
them later.

It's indispensable in meetings because I both take notes about the goals of
meetings beforehand, take note of any important parts during them, and am able
to succinctly review them afterwards as they relate to the original goals, and
easily keep track of any action items.

I manage EVERYTHING this way now-- what I am currently working on, notes about
what I've done in a day, notes about what I've done on the weekend, notes
about books I want to read, movies I want to watch, have watched, fitness
routines. It goes on.

At first it was a small but useful knowledge base, and a good plan for how to
keep track of things better. Now it's a larger, and even more useful knowledge
base, where due to review and organization the important concepts in it have
mostly made its way into my long term memory. And the process of taking and
using the notes has become a smooth and well-honed process. I keep the notes
in dropbox so I have easy access to them on mobile also.

In short: I treat my personal knowledge base as if it were a coding project:
using well organized text files. I am constantly adding to them and
maintaining them. It is working very well for me.

~~~
Koshkin
On the other hand, based on my personal experience, maintaining a constantly
growing archive of things, be it notes, bookmarks, emails, etc. turns out to
be not very useful. Also, it gradually becomes something that you spend more
time on than on other things. I now prefer to be more spontaneous, try to
minimize the number of things that drag me into the past, start things as if
from scratch, "reset" myself, dismiss the baggage that is often turns out to
be nothing more than a dead weight. This "lightweight" approach seems to allow
me to move forward faster, learn new things that I might have no plans to
learn for a long time, because of a queue of other things on my "TODO list".
But again, this may be personal.

~~~
losteric
I had the same problem as you, but my solution was separating "notes" from
future actions.

My notes track knowledge, they are referenced as-needed so I store everything
because there's low/no cost. I've also found that writing things down improves
my recollection, so there's value even if I never reference the note again.

My calendar / omnifocus track future actions, I minimize these and keep them
very well curated - no "todo", only "do". Externalizing some cognition takes
time in exchange for efficiency... less overhead from context switching or
remembering unrelated items.

The tradeoff is loosely analogous to scheduling in computing - inefficient for
an isolated single thread of work, but beneficial when coordinating lots of
concurrent work.

~~~
lucideer
> _no "todo", only "do"_

I'm curious about what this means. What are "do" notes (as distinct from
"todo" ones). If it means that don't calendar, and you just do that task
immediately, how you plan and (more importantly) remember future tasks?

~~~
MichaelBurge
In practice, most people's "todo" list ends up being the garbage bin for low-
priority items that they'll never actually do. It's worth separating the
things you actually plan to do next week/month, from the ones in a "backlog".

Grep any large code repository for "TODO" comments.

~~~
lucideer
As someone who's worked on multiple teams that used TODO comments and then had
a regular type of sprint in which they were grepped and cleared (these weren't
perfect projects, there were other organisational problems, but this
particular thing was handled well), I was actually quite surprised to get into
a discussion recently here on HN about projects where this doesn't happen and
TODO comments end up being largely aspirational.

However, I think code and life are slightly different contexts here. I get
what you mean about separating aspirations from near-term actual intents but I
generally use the word "todo" to refer exclusively to the latter (which still
doesn't help a whole lot with ensuring execution as the list still grows quite
large).

------
rocketcity
I have adopted this practice over the last year and have found immense value
in the practice. I believe this practice is one of the cheapest ways to help
leverage your previous experience on the job as you keep yourself from having
to repeat previous learnings over and over again as you try to remember what
those compiler flags you used 6 months ago actually were :).

My system is quite simple. I have created a github repo called journal and an
alias which opens vim to a markdown file for today's date. If I leave the file
and come back later vim will drop me in at the end of the journal. I intend to
add some vimscript in the future to automatically add a timestamp when I
reopen the file but haven't gotten there yet.

This system has been quite helpful to me as it is resilient to data loss as I
can push to multiple backup systems. Easily searchable (grep). And can support
prettier documents if I want to open my Markdown formatted journals in tools
like Macdown.

TL;DR I use vim to manage this. See alias below.

alias journal='vim + "/Users/username/journal/$(date +%Y)/$(date +%Y%m%d).md"'

~~~
0x03
A script might finesse things a little more, but you could get a naive
implementation of the timestamp behavior with something like:

    
    
      alias journal='vim + "/Users/username/journal/$(date +%Y)/$(date +%Y%m%d).md" -c "execute \"normal! Go$(date +%T)\<CR>========\<CR>\" | startinsert "'

~~~
poidos
This command (as presented) is giving me issues with saving the file on my
machine, not sure if it's specific to only me but figured I'd give you a
heads-up!

~~~
nutate
Here's a nice hacked up version, note the mkdir -p that makes the directory if
it doesn't exist. Also I changed the time from 24hr to more provincial 12hr w/
AM/PM Please be careful adding aliases if you aren't sure what' they're doing!

alias journal='mkdir -p /Users/ __ __ __
_insert_your_username_here_on_mac_on_linux_change_Users_to_home_on_windows_good_luck_
__ __ __/ journal/$(date +%Y)/; vim + "/Users/ __ __ __
_insert_your_username_here_on_mac_on_linux_change_Users_to_home_on_windows_good_luck_
__ __ __/ journal/$(date +%Y)/$(date +%Y-%m-%d).md" -c "execute \"normal!
Go$(date +%r)\<CR>========\<CR>\" | startinsert "'

------
atmosx
For engineers, I found this logbook guide which seems perfect[1]. I found this
on the desk of my new job, about 1 month ago. Someone left it there and it
intrigued me. I'm trying to abide to it, not religiously, but so far so good.
Others might find it helpful.

[1]
[http://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/mindworks/Capstone%20Design/P...](http://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/mindworks/Capstone%20Design/Project%20Guides/Logbook_Handout.pdf)

------
sbov
I have a "notes" directory in dropbox. I use .md files, with a text editor
that does some highlighting based upon the markdown.

95% of them go into what I call my "dev diary". Each day gets a new file. Any
questions, answers, thoughts, etc. while programming or designing go in there.
For searchability, I also add any reference Jira/Trello/etc ids.

Beyond that, I have cheatsheets and checklists. Cheatsheets are short, useful
things (e.g. commands, undocumented gotchas, etc.) for a given piece of tech.
E.g. I have a git.txt, mysql.txt, etc.

Checklists are things I should go over whenever I do X. Am I about to commit
something? Well, there's a list of things I tend to forget to do. So I have a
checklist for this.

Each project also gets a file (or folder if it grows large enough) in my notes
directory.

I previously used Evernote. Then Onenote because it was nicer on the surface
pro. But I had to abandon Onenote because they don't have a good Linux client.
I decided I was going to stop throwing my notes away and just switched to
regular files.

~~~
bluedino
What do you with screenshots or other graphics?

------
dageshi
[http://tiddlywiki.com/](http://tiddlywiki.com/)

Sits in a browser tab, insanely quick to use which is the most important
thing.

Consider it perfect for taking notes.

I use seperate systems for todo and project management (the project management
one I wrote myself)

~~~
warent
Cool, I've never heard of this before. Completely blew my mind when I saw it's
a single html file that I can use offline! I love it and definitely will start
using it.

~~~
dageshi
I think you do need to install a plugin for your browser to save changes to
disk, but beyond that it's pain free.

------
richdougherty
My first notebook entry is a file called 2011-01-20.txt. I just opened it and
had a look what I was doing on that day - really interesting!

These files have useful commands, todo lists, debugging notes, stack traces,
useful links.

Don't overcomplicate things - just make a text file each day and dump
everything in. Don't bother too much with structure or tidiness. If you need
info from the previous day, just copy it across.

Once you've got enough stuff in your notebooks to be valuable do remember to
get an automated backup going.

------
Xeoncross
[https://gist.github.com](https://gist.github.com) is my notebook which has
800+ collections of my own samples and notes along with 800+ stared notes from
other developers.

It's one thing to keep notes. It's another to have a social network around
notes.

~~~
accordionclown
that link is a generic one, to an account's own gists. it is not a link to
your gists, _except_ for you.

------
sizzzzlerz
Back in college, going for my BSEE degree, the professor or lab assistant were
constantly stressing the need to record everything done at the bench in a log
book with pages dated and signed. Part of this was to keep a history of lab
experiments and remind you of what you did and/or learned. Really, however, it
was to develop the habit to carry over into your professional career. There
are many examples of this but the most important one I remember is the
notebook kept by John Bardeen of Bell Labs wherein he recorded the path taken
to invent the transistor along with Shockley and Brattain. Not only did it win
credit and and patent for its invention, it also won him the Nobel Prize. All
because they could conclusively prove their invention along with the when of
its discovery.

~~~
krallja
> dated and signed

What's the signature for?

~~~
detaro
Establish legal link from the contents of the page to the author. At least an
attempt to create a record that can be traced afterwards if there are
IP/patent or manipulation claims. Some of the rules at least some places have:
bound book used page by page, so pages can't easily be inserted afterwards.
Numbered pages so they can't be removed. Corrections have to be dated and
signed as well, old entry is only thinly crossed out so it's still legible.
Empty spaces crossed out.

------
barrkel
I knew what I wanted in a digital notebook, so I spent an afternoon writing
one. This:

* no explicit saving or loading, everything automatically persisted as plain text

* infinite persistent undo / replay of text entry, for retracing steps; can double as work logging; this uses a log file alongside the plain text; this also lets text be deleted without being lost, which helps with clutter

* "most recently edited first" page order, so you can forget about those old pages

* minimal ceremony to create a new page; use the first line as the title

* quick searching and navigation in time and space, using keyboard

[https://github.com/barrkel/scratch](https://github.com/barrkel/scratch)

~~~
irl_zebra
Nice! This is basically Notes on MacOS, which seems to basically do this
(minus infinite undo/redo). I use Notes extensively and it works really well.

~~~
mark_l_watson
Except Apple does not provide a clean way to export notes for archival. I
literally stopped using Apple Notes because of the no-export ‘feature.’

------
seltzered_
When I started my first 'engineering' job at a chip startup over a decade ago,
I remember being given a leather blue notebook with gold lettering titled
'ENGINEERING NOTEBOOK'. It was great for focusing on a single project and
especially made sense for areas beyond code like drawing electrical
schematics, but over time I've become addicted to digital approaches.

These days? I rely heavily on Trello for personal projects - organize things
by keeping a separate Done board (list for every month) for the project for
times I want to flip back through older work done. Also keep paper notebooks
around for times when I want to sketch ideas out.

Additionally there's a 'rhizomatic frankenstack' of nvAlt+simplenote /
pinboard / markdown files in project folders etc. I keep wanting to set up
something where it's all searchable and ideally dream of something like
federated wiki with a lot more UI polish.

[1]: term from Venkat Rao's post [http://mailchi.mp/ribbonfarm/frankenstacks-
and-rhizomes?e=96...](http://mailchi.mp/ribbonfarm/frankenstacks-and-
rhizomes?e=9621d0c003)

------
quantumhobbit
I keep a notebook partially to help myself but also to protect myself James
Comey style. It really comes in handy when non-coding managers ask what I do
all day or when they try to gaslight me on my commitments.

And yes, I am looking for a new job.

------
rayascott
This might seem like over-kill at first, but I've been running the Enterprise
version of [http://www.xwiki.org](http://www.xwiki.org) on my laptop, and
couldn't be happier. Its served up using Jetty, and starts up automatically
when I login. I like using tools that I know will scale well in the future,
should the need arise (no reason why you couldn't run it on a free Heroku
instance, if it handles the load, and it should, as it just idles along most
of the time).

It has a Code Macro plugin that supports Pygments syntax highlighting. It all
comes down to how you structure the wiki (I often turn to Wikipedia for help
with that). I've been an Engineer for 20 years, and the info-flood doesn't
really end, unless you dial back your enthusiasm. I like to document the tools
and services I discover so that I know what's valuable, and what's out there,
should I ever need them.

Once installed, its very easy to create new pages and edit them. Plus there
are hundreds of plugins.

~~~
asciimo
TiddlyWiki is a lightweight, portable wiki option. (I wish it had Vim
keybindings, though.) [http://tiddlywiki.com/](http://tiddlywiki.com/)

------
xor1
Quiver is the closest thing I've found to what I consider my perfect note-
taking software. I think getting any closer would involve writing my own at
this point, and that's simply not going to happen.

~~~
crispinb
Same here. It's perhaps a slight shame that development has been so slow over
the last year or two. But OTOH to be honest it's good enough as it is to be
far more useful to me than any other note taking app I've used.

------
lkrubner
Maybe this is just changing fashion, but a lot of developers keep blogs for
this reason, and 10 years ago everyone would have simply called this idea a
"blog". Among the ones I read:

[http://intertwingly.net/blog/](http://intertwingly.net/blog/)

[https://burningbird.net/](https://burningbird.net/)

[https://kottke.org/](https://kottke.org/)

[https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/](https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/)

I keep my own blog entirely for my own benefit, and the tech section is simply
things I've read recently, or things I've learned recently:

[http://www.smashcompany.com/technology](http://www.smashcompany.com/technology)

------
shams93
Usually they're work specific notes for my coworkers, its always nice to share
a line by line account of your build process when you're using some arcane
systems that require being built from source with really complex configuration
issues to handle.

~~~
shams93
The only tool I use are markdown files and gitlab to do this, I've found the
.md markdown format to be extremely useful compared to the bad old days of
emailing word docs.

------
BjoernKW
While I don't keep a software development notebook as a rigorous practice I
note down interesting or useful insights, findings and patterns in Evernote. I
sometimes keep code snippets as GitHub Gists but usually I find source code to
be too transient and dynamic to keep it anywhere else than in the actual
project it's needed in.

More importantly though I use my blog for keeping more polished, more
elaborate versions of my more relevant notes. Sharing your thoughts with
others not only benefits others but it also makes you think over and refine
your original ideas.

Distilling your thoughts for the benefit of others will help you better
understand the matter as well. While we teach, we learn.

------
bloaf
I've been actively looking for a good tool for personal note taking, and
finding lots of things that seem not-quite-right.

Plain Text:

Pros > Simplest, works everywhere/on everything, scales well (append forever!)

Cons > Least automated, no images, no math, no code, hyperlinks depend on
editor, no embedded files

WYSIWYG Doc Editor (Word, Writer, etc):

Pros > As easy as plain text, can do images/math/hyperlinks/embedded files,
somewhat portable

Cons > Bad at code, not many automated features, unwieldy once file gets large

Markup language tool (Org-Mode, Wikis, etc):

Pros > Powerful, portable, good at code/links, scales well, highly
configurable, highly scaleable

Cons > Have to learn the markup language, mostly bad at math, high up-front
costs (e.g. needing to set up a server or learn alien keyboard shortcuts),
non-wysiwyg feels less like a "quick note" and more like a professional
document, image/doc embedding can be hit or miss

Note-taking app (Onenote, Evernote, etc):

Pros > Automates lots of note-taking tasks (e.g. time stamping/tagging), can
do images/math*/hyperlinks/embedded files, scales... fairly well

Cons > Least portable (dependent on app-specific sync features which may
change), less simple (best use of notebook features are non-obvious), still
bad at code

Electronic lab notebooks (ELNs) (labfolder, benchling, etc):

Pros > Good for organizing/presenting data, embedding files, scale very well,
have collaboration features

Cons > Very not-simple (most require either require server config, or you
don't own your data), most are somehow still bad at math/code, frequently
expensive and not portable

Task Managers / To-do lists (Trello, Asana, etc):

Pros > Very intuitive to use, can sort of embed documents/images, have collab
features

Cons > Not good for longer-form notes, bad at math, not meant for note-taking,
you mostly don't own your data

Others:

Jupyter/Mathematica can do WYSIWYG text, code, math, data, and images all in
one document. However, Mathematica is expensive, and Jupyter is non-trivial to
get up and running. These tools are primarily geared towards creating a
polished document, and are less good at documenting the evolution of ideas
inherent in note-taking.

Personal Diary/Journal software is mostly underwhelming, most of these seem
like cut-down note-taking apps sold to the non-tech-savvy

~~~
akvadrako
Jupyter is trivial to get up and running. I did it just a couple weeks ago and
it took under 5 minutes. There is a docker image but I think I just did "pip
install jupyter" and "jupyter notebook".

~~~
Myrmornis
I’m thinking perhaps GP is referring to the fact that you can’t just quickly
use Jupyter; the server has to be running, with your desired kernel, and you
need to know what port it’s on and get a browser tab open on it.

------
gglitch
Someone should make a database of every HN comment on the best ways to manage
notes and/or tasks. I might even buy a subscription.

Edit: My current stack, to show good faith: paper for log and tasks, Org and
Git for memoranda.

------
mumonz
I have a small website in the wild. Every page is a markdown file with notes
and ideas about a subject. The entire website is git versioned. I keep a copy
of the git repo on Dropbox to easily edit articles and push to upstream (that
is the place where the website is hosted). Ah... there is an sqlite file with
a single table with the following cols: article-name, file-path, creation-
date, tags (for search by argument). Article last edit time is taken directly
by the file. Every meta-info is shown on top of the html rendered markdown
file (i use Parsedown)

------
canadianhacker
I like these types of discussions.

For me, note-taking is something which helps me digest complex ideas. It's a
valuable thing and something you can improve at with time.

Then I read the reasoning behind why others don't take notes and I stop to
think. Hmm, maybe there is such a thing as too much. Maybe note-taking has a
fine balance. Breaking up complexity and summarizing it with notes can be very
helpful with getting something finished. Writing journals of everything you do
daily probably detracts time from actually performing the tasks required.

There's some science out there on how dopamine gets released when we TALK
about performing an action with desirable results. (I'm going to create this
project, I'm going to workout this summer and lose weight, I'm going to read
12 books this year). Basically, you're being rewarded for not doing but just
saying. If you spend too much time note-taking on a plan or project, you might
be getting the dopamine fix, which might make it harder to execute.

Similar comparisons are with startups and large companies. Startups work fast
and can ship products quicker, at the cost of maintainability. Large companies
have to take their time documenting, grabbing requirements, assigning the
team, and following internal processes. The process kills productivity, in
favor of predictability and maintainability.

------
pjmorris
In Dropbox, I keep an annual logbook file for both work and home, just a text
file (well, rtf). As I do things that I want to remember I did, I write a
note, paste a command line or link, etc, under a line with the date on which I
did/wrote/pasted. Over time I've built up a record of my activities, and a
handy notebook for remembering how to do complicated things I seldom do. It
also makes it easy to write up status reports when those are necessary.

------
mbrock
I've noticed that discussing and chatting are way more productive forms of
writing for me, and I've realized that it's exactly because they discourage
excessive editing.

So after thinking about it for a while, I realized that the best way for me to
take notes is just to have a chat room with myself, where I write things down
as I do stuff or think about stuff.

The common pattern is that I start the day by writing something about what I
want to do, how I plan to spend the day, maybe some reflections on how I feel
about the project's direction... Then during the day I'll put some brief
notes, including random ideas that I just want to get out of me... And then at
the end of my workday I'll go and reflect what I did and the current status.

Then I also have a setup of Org mode documents. One is a general project
management file for all the projects in my life (housing, volunteering, work,
recipes, etc) and then there are notes files that are more like sprawling
personal wikis or (more pretentiously) like very disorganized book drafts
where I flesh out my thoughts in a more long term way or in depth way.

(About the self-chat, I also use that for writing things like blog posts; I
make a first draft just by chatting, and then I spend hours reorganizing and
editing.)

------
d08ble
I'm using LiveComment structured notes for everything. I developed a
methodology how to use it across multiple operation systems & technologies.
LiveComment extend my memory & speedup developing source code. It has powerful
server/client plugins system for add any function in runtime with live reload.
I'm using paper & board for brainstorm too.

[https://www.npmjs.com/package/livecomment](https://www.npmjs.com/package/livecomment)

Samples here:

[http://acpul.org/livecomment-src](http://acpul.org/livecomment-src) \-
livecomment js sources (it's quine, that developed using self documented code)

[http://acpul.org/pool](http://acpul.org/pool) \- common memory pool: active
info, some processed bookmarks from HN, reddit, etc.

[http://acpul.org/pica](http://acpul.org/pica) \- livecomment in real project.
here is collected info when i was develop gpu optimizations for popular nodejs
image resizing library
[https://www.npmjs.com/package/pica](https://www.npmjs.com/package/pica)

------
mark_l_watson
When I got my first full time job as a programmer in the 1970s, my boss handed
me a new square deal grid bound notebook and told me to write down everything
I did. It was my secret weapon: years after working on something, I could do a
quick refresh if questions arose.

I still keep copious notes every workday of everything; e.g., hyper parameters
for modeling, server info, URIs to useful documentation, etc.

------
jpeeler
For several years I've been using RedNotebook -
[http://rednotebook.sourceforge.net](http://rednotebook.sourceforge.net). I
use it mostly to journal what I worked on so that when I need to report it I
don't have to struggle to remember anything. Since RedNotebook's text input is
directly tied to the date, it works best in my opinion for daily log entries.
However, there are shortcuts to jump to the previous/next entry to easily skip
days with no log entry. Basic text formatting (txt2tags) is supported along
with the ability to export to HTML, Latex, or PDF. It's created in GTK (if
that matters), but is supported on Linux, Windows, and Mac.

------
RangerScience
Professionally - I took over the monthly payment system at my current job.
There was a fair amount of technical debt and tribal knowledge about the thing
- the first few months, I took extensive notes about everything from basic
usage to problems encountered. As I paid off the technical debt, however, I
was able to gradually turn the notes into code; now, it's almost at the point
where there's nothing to write down each month (although there's usually new
code to write).

Outside of that, a friend of mine has made his own semi-public wiki, and tied
that into his email client; he can now easily link to pages from within the
email, allowing him to communicate A LOT with very few new words. It's pretty
neat.

------
baron816
Here is my software engineering notebook (still a work in progress):
[https://baron816.gitbooks.io/good-stuff-to-
know/content/](https://baron816.gitbooks.io/good-stuff-to-know/content/)

Working on this has definitely helped me learn these concepts much better and
deeper, plus it's easy to go back and find things when I need them. Just
reading something is not a good way to absorb information. Actually having to
regurgitate something in your own words makes a huge difference.

Gitbook is not the best place for all my notes. Will be using Evernote going
forward.

------
crehn
I have a "things learned" section in Notes.app, mostly to avoid repeated
fuckups and to become a better person. Some earlier example entries:

* Leave the office once you're _really_ sure that deployment was successful

* Have timestamps in logs

* Before making your opinion public, make sure what you think is a mistake is in fact a mistake

* When you struggle with an issue, make sure the fix isn't right in front of you

* Make sure everything's set up for remote work; you don't want to hotfix some production issue at 2 AM, only to find out you can't access Git from home

* Other people's time is worth twice yours

------
jkmcf
For me, celerity of access makes my note taking possible. Mouse over a hot
zone and the editor slides out. Mouse away, and it hides.

I used to use SideNote, but that was abandoned. I'm currently using
SideWriter, but it's a little flaky.

I hope to start learning swift soon so I can develop my own with some extra
features, mainly markdown and either tabs/multiple hot zones.

My memory is horrible, so I need to write down what I did/thought before it
vanishes. Mostly comes in handy when I have to justify to HR why they need to
give me a raise.

------
baldfat
I currently use Boost and I like it, but I miss the old PIMs of the early 00s.
I keep wanting to make my own old school pim as a pet project but that always
stays in the back. It would be ncurses based :)

I started with old wikis and then a Russian PIM that I can't remember and then
Google Notebook. Evernote was always a hit o miss the sync never was good for
me.

------
Myrmornis
I keep all bash history, automatically appending it to a file that’s backed up
in google drive. That deals very effectively with remembering how I did
something from the command line in the past, which is being mentioned in this
thread. However it doesn’t work for commands issued on a machine which isn’t
your main personal machine.

------
forkLding
Is there any opensource things that can be a software engineering notebook or
journal that is easy to use and painless?

~~~
qrbLPHiKpiux
A plain paper notebook. I’ve tried everything and nothing works as well.

~~~
colechristensen
This is true and somewhat infuriating.

I have a $700 computer in my pocket and the best way to write a grocery list
is on a post-it found in the kitchen drawer.

I think it comes down to the human interface of a touch screen being slow,
frustrating, and generally inefficient.

~~~
asciimo
It's amazing that we have accepted this user interface for as long as we have.
Imagine if touching your paper notebook the wrong way could accidentally erase
it or share it with your mom.

~~~
Koshkin
> _share it with your mom_

O horror!

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ptr_void
Used vimwiki for a while until I accidentally deleted few top level file with
lots of file links and now it is almost impossible to get it all organized
again without going through very file. Tried some DIY versions with markdown
files in directory structure, but the solution isn't too good.

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anotherevan
On the topic of tools, I'm wondering if QOwnNotes would work for this time of
journal/notetaking.

I recently moved off Basket and after an extensive search, found QOwnNotes
seemed to fit my brain the best.

[http://www.qownnotes.org/](http://www.qownnotes.org/)

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bootcat
I think jotting down very important points we realized while developing is
worth noting down. May be in a gitbook. But having an actual paper or notepad
journal and noting down everyday things is too much data and we rarely, and i
mean like very rarely look at that a second time !

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Fomite
Despite being primarily a computational scientist, I still keep a proper "dead
tree" lab notebook. It's been invaluable, both in keeping my thoughts ordered,
and also referencing decisions toward old projects.

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amirmansour
If you're on a Mac, I highly recommend Quiver - "The Programmer's Notebook"
([http://happenapps.com](http://happenapps.com))

No affiliation, just like and use it :)

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spdegabrielle
I find it hilarious that in science and engineering using a lab or engineers
notebook is common practice and VC is rare, but in software engineering VC is
common and keeping a notebook is rare.

~~~
spdegabrielle
Electronic Lab Notebooks are a growing sector e.g. Findings - Lab Notebook by
Findings Software SAS [https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/findings-lab-
notebook/id9228...](https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/findings-lab-
notebook/id922844272?mt=8)

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roadbeats
I use Github for digital notes:
[https://github.com/azer/notebook](https://github.com/azer/notebook)

And physical notebook for other things.

~~~
BucketSort
Nice notes man. You've inspired me to make my own on github.

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kanishkdudeja
I use Evernote for this since it also backs as a web clipping tool.

Any article I like on the web which I might want to come back to in future,
Evernote makes it easy to clip web pages as is.

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zerr
> do you keep a notebook (digital or plain dead-tree version) to record things
> you learn

What's the point? After some time, that would the list of things you forgot...
:)

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jgamman
yep i do and i've carried the habit from the lab into the workforce. it's
mostly a write-many, read-few kind of thing but i've got a very loose system
for capturing Action Items and i find having doodle space helps me keep track
of the discussions other people are hafving. but then, i'm an ex-chemist too
so biased sample... ;-)

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jypepin
I take A LOT of notes of everything. Mostly because I like writing things
down. I NEVER find myself coming back to those, ever.

