Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Do you keep a developer diary?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 61 posts

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

#51

Post by adaml_623 »

SFJulie wrote: post #9

I keep a diary: with following info day : arriving : departure : time of lunch // travel time. Why ? I noticed after 43h in a moving window of 5 days my focus, irritability is up to the roof and I make way too much mistakes that can lead to a dramatic mistake. My work contract is 37.5 so everytime I reach too much overhead I talk to my manager ask him if he will need me one day to make extra efforts in case of emerge…

I am sorry you are in a stressed situation and I hope that you find a favourable way to change it.

My thought would be that if you can manage a way to increase that 43h by just 10% or 20% then over time and transport delays will not be as worrying.

Can you incorporate stretching exercises or walking into your work environment? Try and keep a diary of the positive things that can help you cope with work.

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

#54

Post by kaushalmodi »

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…

Same thought as /u/ams6110.. if using emacs, give M-x org-capture a try. It does the time-stamping automatically, and you get stuff like org-agenda, TODO, expirting the notes to other formats, and other org goodies.

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

#55

Post by kaushalmodi »

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?

I do time-stamping based note taking too using org-capture in emacs, and I also use tags to put my notes in some broad category. Tag auto-completion using counsel package does not need me to remember the exact tag string if it's used previously.

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

#56

Post by joepvd »

bmalehorn wrote: post #46
joepvd wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah makes sense

Maybe an extra advantage is that you are not tempted to rewrite everything all the time, as I am doing with my attempt of topicaly organized notes.

Append-only might really be helpful. Experiment starts now :)

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

#57

Post by ufmace »

Sure do, I have at every job I've worked for several years.

I mostly used plain text files for it, and I never found a web solution that did what I wanted. So I wrote my own a few months ago during a time between jobs: https://www.masongup.com/DailyNotes

Kinda similar to what some other people on this thread seem to do. I always used plain text files for simplicity. IMO, thinking about formatting and making things pretty just gets in the way. The point is to get all of the details of everything you did that day down for future reference. That's what my site does too, just plain text notes, no formatting codes supported, stuffed into a DB and searchable.

Works pretty good for what I need. I've been meaning to add some more features to make it easier for other people to use, but haven't gotten around to it yet. Feel free to use it if you want, it does have import from and export to text files.

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

#58

Post by ufmace »

joepvd wrote: post #56
bmalehorn wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah makes sense Maybe an extra advantage is that you are not tempted to rewrite everything all the time, as I am doing with my attempt of topicaly organized notes. Append-only might really be helpful. Experiment starts now :)

I can confirm, I do this also and posted so elsewhere. But the key is ruthless simplicity. Just a blob of plain text every day and any searchable codes, resist all urges to add formatting, drawings, tables, categories, etc. It's more important to put as few mental obstacles in the way of writing in it as you can, and even if you write a lot every day, it still isn't all that much text, and is pretty easy to manage and search conventionally.

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

#60

Post by navalsaini »

I do so on medium. I am sharing the link for the sake of it - https://medium.com/online-learning-ideas . Though I very recently started keeping one and hardly has anything.

Earlier I have used google docs for the purpose. Though those documents were often more structured than the link I shared above.

Post reply on HN