To further extend that idea, it's important to consider what works to allow for recall easily. I've used a multitude of things:
Evernote
Apple Notes
Notion (paid plan)
Roam Research
markdown in a local directory and GitHub
One of the challenges that I've found is finding what I need when I need and making sure related ideas show up when I need them to. For those of us that write code, standard note-taking apps just don't cut it (looking at you, Apple Notes) which has no syntax highlighting or code-fencing/formatting.
I've almost all technical notes in markdown pushed to a private GitHub repository which includes useful commands and even my own glossary for terms I've heard but just learned the definitions for. This is useful, because I have an alias in my shell to take me to that directory for this repo and I can pop open any text editor and perform updates and additions. This also allows me to do a find easily via Unix utilities, like grep or awk and the one I prefer, ripgrep. Joplin makes them easy to read or some command-line formatter like Glow instead of reading the unformatted markdown.
But as you may notice, the recall component isn't there -- doing the above requires that I still remember how and where I've organized notes and certainly doesn't give me hints to related topics/ideas that I've taken down in the past. It enforces a very flat and one-directional structure, but information is bi-directional. When idea A is connected to idea B (A -> B), idea B should also be connected to A (B -> A), For example, coffee is to wakefulness as wakefulness is to coffee. If I search for "coffee", please remind me about my notes on "wakefulness". If I search for "wakefulness", please remind me about my notes on "coffee". This led me to discover Roam Research which is an amalgamation of all the tools I've used combined under one application. So when I've my coffee notes open, I can hit a keyboard shortcut that pops open related topics and ideas in a side bar (so useful) without changing my page completely over to "wakefulness". It allows me to browse two things at once. My only gripe really is that it's still in its infancy, it's expensive, and I'm trusting my data/notes to a third party provider
Thank you for your deep response, you're totally right. I'll update the article with some platforms to take notes where developers are comfortable. I'll also try Roam Research 😉, thanks! 🙌
The emphasis on notes is a crucial one!
To further extend that idea, it's important to consider what works to allow for recall easily. I've used a multitude of things:
One of the challenges that I've found is finding what I need when I need and making sure related ideas show up when I need them to. For those of us that write code, standard note-taking apps just don't cut it (looking at you, Apple Notes) which has no syntax highlighting or code-fencing/formatting.
I've almost all technical notes in markdown pushed to a private GitHub repository which includes useful commands and even my own glossary for terms I've heard but just learned the definitions for. This is useful, because I have an alias in my shell to take me to that directory for this repo and I can pop open any text editor and perform updates and additions. This also allows me to do a find easily via Unix utilities, like
greporawkand the one I prefer,ripgrep. Joplin makes them easy to read or some command-line formatter like Glow instead of reading the unformatted markdown.But as you may notice, the recall component isn't there -- doing the above requires that I still remember how and where I've organized notes and certainly doesn't give me hints to related topics/ideas that I've taken down in the past. It enforces a very flat and one-directional structure, but information is bi-directional. When idea A is connected to idea B (A -> B), idea B should also be connected to A (B -> A), For example, coffee is to wakefulness as wakefulness is to coffee. If I search for "coffee", please remind me about my notes on "wakefulness". If I search for "wakefulness", please remind me about my notes on "coffee". This led me to discover Roam Research which is an amalgamation of all the tools I've used combined under one application. So when I've my coffee notes open, I can hit a keyboard shortcut that pops open related topics and ideas in a side bar (so useful) without changing my page completely over to "wakefulness". It allows me to browse two things at once. My only gripe really is that it's still in its infancy, it's expensive, and I'm trusting my data/notes to a third party provider
Really interesting David!
Thank you for your deep response, you're totally right. I'll update the article with some platforms to take notes where developers are comfortable. I'll also try Roam Research 😉, thanks! 🙌
Just excited to share :)
I forgot to note that it has a graph representation such that you can visualize all connected ideas... for a particular topic
I recommend watching a couple of YouTube videos first. Perhaps this one: youtu.be/vxOffM_tVHI
I stopped paying for Notion and had to decide after a two week trial for Roam whether or not I wanted to keep it.