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Ask HN: As a programmer, How do you take notes while coding?
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Re: Ask HN: As a programmer, How do you take notes while coding?
#2Plain text files.
Re: Ask HN: As a programmer, How do you take notes while coding?
#3As comments in the code sometimes, comments in JIRA sometimes, sometimes text files.
Re: Ask HN: As a programmer, How do you take notes while coding?
#4Depends.
Usually a mix of comments in the code before committing, text files, markdown notes, and whatever internal task system we’re using (Jira-style).
I haven’t found a silver bullet that makes all of that feel cohesive. It's usually a balance between “what’s fast right now” and “what future me might understand.”
Re: Ask HN: As a programmer, How do you take notes while coding?
#5For very intricate code - literally print code out and find a quiet corner and get a pen. Reduce distractions. Mark it up like I’m reading a complex piece of literature.
Re: Ask HN: As a programmer, How do you take notes while coding?
#6I keep a legal pad next to my keyboard and hand write things in it.
Re: Ask HN: As a programmer, How do you take notes while coding?
#7Comments in the code for items that need to be addressed before final review. e.g. "XXX: Blah blah.." or "TODO: Investigate blah blah". For other types of notes useful to future me or someone else coming back to the task/feature in the future, mostly Jira comments
Re: Ask HN: As a programmer, How do you take notes while coding?
#8If it is something I need to resolve for my current work, a comment: // TODO... And then I search for TODOs before pushing any code to the team.
If it is something to work on or research myself, but not part of the current work, I have a running TODO list in its own text file.
If it is something that anyone on the team could work on, I put notes or a task in whatever tracking system my team uses.
Re: Ask HN: As a programmer, How do you take notes while coding?
#9For very intricate code - literally print code out and find a quiet corner and get a pen. Reduce distractions. Mark it up like I’m reading a complex piece of literature.
I do this, too, but I also delete all the comments before printing to avoid cognitive bias induced by the comments.
Re: Ask HN: As a programmer, How do you take notes while coding?
#10These days I use this VS Code extension and have 1 note pinned as the first tab per repo. It acts as both a temp scratchpad and long term note location.
https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=dionmunk...