Ask HN: Do you keep a developer diary? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Do you keep a developer diary?

#41

Post by weaksauce » Sat, May 20, 2017, 9:33 PM UTC

kabdib wrote: post #19

Keeping a diary is pivotal to how I work. I used to write things down in notebooks, but you can't grep dead trees, especially handwritten ones. So I keep a simple flat text file with a new timestamp every day, and nearly everything I do makes it into this file, at some level. I can answer all kinds of questions, from when someone joined or left a team, to how I installed that driver last year, to which servers I inst…

Just one file?

I have a man page repository that is just a simple folder that gets tab completion (basically ls fed into the complete function). aliased to `mm` as in myman(pages). that gets opened up into emacs though so it's basically a repository of files that you can grep through.

Care to share your emacs/shell setup for what you are doing?

Re: Ask HN: Do you keep a developer diary?

#42

Post by pjmorris » Sat, May 20, 2017, 9:33 PM UTC

joepvd wrote: post #36

jammycakes wrote: post #31

I started keeping a comprehensive developer diary (I actually refer to it as lab notes) back in December, and it's made a considerable difference to how I think about what I'm coding. The way I write it is similar to test-driven development — I write down each step in what I'm doing before I do it. When I run a command, I copy the command itself into my notes, then once it's run I copy the important parts of the outp…

Is there a reason why you made the structure of the notes depend on time? Aren't notes that are about the same topic getting very far apart from each other? I think searching works well when you are as month or maybe three into the project. How does this work like after five years?

Not GP, but I have kept a 'logbook' file per year for ten years, with similar contents. I'm sure there's a better way than relying on OS X Spotlight to drum up things from five years ago, but it works well enough for me.

Re: Ask HN: Do you keep a developer diary?

#43

Post by sawyerjhood » Sat, May 20, 2017, 9:35 PM UTC

I've always struggled with journaling in my personal life as well professionally. Recently I created a small messenger bot for myself that I can then use to send messages about what I did / learned, categorize them by hashtags, and then generate a list filtered by categories and sorted by timestamp. I don't think this solution is for everybody, but it works especially well for me because I use FB Messenger as my main chat app and I tend to want to be able to write anytime I have a thought, but generally read my notes infrequently.

Re: Ask HN: Do you keep a developer diary?

#44

Post by spearmint » Sat, May 20, 2017, 9:43 PM UTC

zubat wrote: post #30

I keep a minimal form of journal for all life events. I briefly describe a thing I did or a thing that happened, and how much energy it took me to go through it on a 0 to 4 scale, where 0 is breathing and 4 is major life crisis. If I think there was a lesson I write the lesson too. This creates a feedback loop for stress reduction where I aim to mitigate both the likelihood of having a crisis and train a calm respons…

That's actually pretty inspiring. I think I'm going to give your system a try.

Re: Ask HN: Do you keep a developer diary?

#45

Post by wickedOne » Sat, May 20, 2017, 10:13 PM UTC

i've taken notes for a while, but in the end considered it to be a waste of time (other than that it helped me remember thing more easy at first).

like any other diary, you won't re-read it and if you run into an issue of which you know you've faced it before, chances are that your written down thoughts are that unstructured that solving the issue for a second time probably takes less time than trying to find the solution in your notes.

so if writing down the issues you're facing and their solutions makes it easier for you to remember, go for it, other than that such a diary is of no use to my opinion

Re: Ask HN: Do you keep a developer diary?

#46

Post by bmalehorn » Sat, May 20, 2017, 10:13 PM UTC

joepvd wrote: post #36

jammycakes wrote: post #31

I started keeping a comprehensive developer diary (I actually refer to it as lab notes) back in December, and it's made a considerable difference to how I think about what I'm coding. The way I write it is similar to test-driven development — I write down each step in what I'm doing before I do it. When I run a command, I copy the command itself into my notes, then once it's run I copy the important parts of the outp…

Is there a reason why you made the structure of the notes depend on time? Aren't notes that are about the same topic getting very far apart from each other? I think searching works well when you are as month or maybe three into the project. How does this work like after five years?

Also not GP, but I also have notes per-day.

If you organize by topic, you have to decide which topic to put information in. This means you have to pause and think for 10 seconds about your organization system before writing anything. 10 seconds is enough to lose your train of thought.

If you organize by time, you don't have to decide where to put it. It always goes in "today". You have to pause for 0 seconds.

Re: Ask HN: Do you keep a developer diary?

#47

Post by bmalehorn » Sat, May 20, 2017, 10:44 PM UTC

weaksauce wrote: post #41

kabdib wrote: post #19

Keeping a diary is pivotal to how I work. I used to write things down in notebooks, but you can't grep dead trees, especially handwritten ones. So I keep a simple flat text file with a new timestamp every day, and nearly everything I do makes it into this file, at some level. I can answer all kinds of questions, from when someone joined or left a team, to how I installed that driver last year, to which servers I inst…

Just one file? I have a man page repository that is just a simple folder that gets tab completion (basically ls fed into the complete function). aliased to `mm` as in myman(pages). that gets opened up into emacs though so it's basically a repository of files that you can grep through. Care to share your emacs/shell setup for what you are doing?

I have a similar setup to GP: Emacs + one file + an "new-day" command.

Everything goes in one big "scratch.txt" file, with headers like:

    ###### Saturday, May 20 2017

...at the start of each day. These are generated by a function I run every day:

    (defun new-day ()
      (interactive)
      (insert (format-time-string "###### %A, %B %d %Y\n")))

"scratch.txt" is always an open buffer in Emacs. You can search through the file with isearch, helm, or whatever you use. I use the "desktop" library to save and restore all open files when I close Emacs.

That's really it, just one big unstructured text file.

I don't put a lot of prose in this diary. Only todo items, code snippets, and errors / log output.

Our setups have slightly different goals: yours is to create daily nuggets of documentation, while mine is to archive whatever thoughts and code were running through my head each day.

Re: Ask HN: Do you keep a developer diary?

#48

Post by weaksauce » Sat, May 20, 2017, 10:52 PM UTC

bmalehorn wrote: post #47

weaksauce wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just one file? I have a man page repository that is just a simple folder that gets tab completion (basically ls fed into the complete function). aliased to `mm` as in myman(pages). that gets opened up into emacs though so it's basically a repository of files that you can grep through. Care to share your emacs/shell setup for what you are doing?

I have a similar setup to GP: Emacs + one file + an "new-day" command. Everything goes in one big "scratch.txt" file, with headers like: ###### Saturday, May 20 2017 ...at the start of each day. These are generated by a function I run every day: (defun new-day () (interactive) (insert (format-time-string "###### %A, %B %d %Y\n"))) "scratch.txt" is always an open buffer in Emacs. You can search through the file with i…

Thanks for that... I have an ideas file in my man pages that is an org file. I might do something similar to this as well for just daily thoughts. The man pages have been invaluable for long running notes that are infrequently accessed or thought about.

Re: Ask HN: Do you keep a developer diary?

#49

Post by wishinghand » Sat, May 20, 2017, 11:51 PM UTC

I don't keep a diary or journal but I do keep a public repo of little things I discover that I won't need everyday, but will definitely need again someday.

https://github.com/wishinghand/Today-I-Learned

They're not deep or very in depth, but I leave them public in case someone needs what I discovered.

I got the idea from someone who posted their version on Hacker News years three or four years ago. Theirs was more journal like in its disclipline- the author added one a day.

Re: Ask HN: Do you keep a developer diary?

#50

Post by kabdib » Sun, May 21, 2017, 12:02 AM UTC

weaksauce wrote: post #41

kabdib wrote: post #19

Keeping a diary is pivotal to how I work. I used to write things down in notebooks, but you can't grep dead trees, especially handwritten ones. So I keep a simple flat text file with a new timestamp every day, and nearly everything I do makes it into this file, at some level. I can answer all kinds of questions, from when someone joined or left a team, to how I installed that driver last year, to which servers I inst…

Just one file? I have a man page repository that is just a simple folder that gets tab completion (basically ls fed into the complete function). aliased to `mm` as in myman(pages). that gets opened up into emacs though so it's basically a repository of files that you can grep through. Care to share your emacs/shell setup for what you are doing?

Just one file, backed up regularly. I think the simple is key; one of the sibling replies here has a bit of lisp similar to what I use, and that's it.

The problem with applying a bunch of structure is that you start to screw with the structure, maybe try to turn things into JSON or whatever, pivot by date or technology or location, and a few hours later you've wasted a bunch of time mucking with stuff that you'll probably waste more time mucking with later. Just slamming text into a file and having a minimal syntax for dating things is, I've found, sufficient. I want notes and a little support for continuity ("what the heck was I juggling when I left on Friday?"), not a blog or a platform for deathless prose.

It'd be nice if there was a rich text system similar to Emacs that didn't force you do write markup or handcuff you to a proprietary data format. Truthfully I haven't looked that hard (multi-platform is probably difficult to achieve). I have notes files strung back over twenty years, and simple text is a hard habit to break.