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Show HN: I've been writing daily TILs for a year

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Re: Show HN: I've been writing daily TILs for a year

#102
I don't understand the enthusiasm for this or the rampant forking going on.

Most of these fall firmly under "let me google that for you."

  How do I check my Ubuntu version?
  How do I split a tmux window?
  How do I expand a clojure macro?
Repeat for 300 more easily google-able questions... Actually I just realized, maybe I'm too old. If that's the case, here's a great tool: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=How+do+I+check+my+Ubuntu+version%3F

Re: Show HN: I've been writing daily TILs for a year

#103
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what newsfeeds are for. You can get an atom feed of the latest commits to any repo via github: https://github.com/jbranchaud/til/commits/master.atom

Thanks for that. The HTML encoding is... interesting there - < is there, but > isn't replaced by >. How on earth is a feed reader meant to parse that?

In XML, you don't need to escape >, IIRC. So, it would seem some programmer is either lazy here, or trying to save bytes. You MUST escape <, as otherwise it looks like the start of a tag. Note that the content of the tag you see that in is serialized HTML, too, so at that point, there's HTML in the XML. (and not very good HTML…)

Re: Show HN: I've been writing daily TILs for a year

#104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I blame that I've been writing "SQL" all day and have unconsciously associated three letter non English words and "Is acronym". Hyperpedantically, "SQL" is an initialism, but not an acronym.

FYI: The difference between an acronym and initialism is that the abbreviation formed with initialisms is not pronounced as a word, rather you say the individual letters, such as FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation), CIA (Central Intelligence Agency), and DVD (Digital Video Disk*). Edit: Not a criticism, I just I didn't know.

Someone should tell this guy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7EgrY17Ozk

Re: Show HN: I've been writing daily TILs for a year

#105
post #102

I don't understand the enthusiasm for this or the rampant forking going on. Most of these fall firmly under "let me google that for you." How do I check my Ubuntu version? How do I split a tmux window? How do I expand a clojure macro? Repeat for 300 more easily google-able questions... Actually I just realized, maybe I'm too old. If that's the case, here's a great tool: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=How+do+I+check+my+Ubuntu+v…

I assume the value comes from the act of recording your learnings over sharing or later reading them.

You sparked an idea for myself though! Don't gmail results now show up in Google search results?

I can email myself my TIL findings and they will show up at the top (hopefully) the next time I google the same problem. Experiment time!

Re: Show HN: I've been writing daily TILs for a year

#106
post #102

I don't understand the enthusiasm for this or the rampant forking going on. Most of these fall firmly under "let me google that for you." How do I check my Ubuntu version? How do I split a tmux window? How do I expand a clojure macro? Repeat for 300 more easily google-able questions... Actually I just realized, maybe I'm too old. If that's the case, here's a great tool: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=How+do+I+check+my+Ubuntu+v…

You google for them, then you rephrase to be concise to what you wanted, and in doing so help commit them to memory, and commit them into a publicly visible resource -- where somebody else might find them by googling.

It's not REALLY useful, but at the same time it's really useful.

Re: Show HN: I've been writing daily TILs for a year

#107
post #102

I don't understand the enthusiasm for this or the rampant forking going on. Most of these fall firmly under "let me google that for you." How do I check my Ubuntu version? How do I split a tmux window? How do I expand a clojure macro? Repeat for 300 more easily google-able questions... Actually I just realized, maybe I'm too old. If that's the case, here's a great tool: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=How+do+I+check+my+Ubuntu+v…

I think the added value in this is that by doing it then you can get back to the learning process going on in your brain at the time you wrote about it and this could resonate with many other stored but half-forgotten memories (for example that project that you were working on when you wrote that note, bringing in additional information).

Moreover, nothing is more useful to the understanding of a subject than trying to explain it to someone else, including your future self (you can only say to have fully understand Relativity when you are able to explain it your grandparents? :) ) That's why I guess it's being seen as a good thing.

Re: Show HN: I've been writing daily TILs for a year

#108
post #102

I don't understand the enthusiasm for this or the rampant forking going on. Most of these fall firmly under "let me google that for you." How do I check my Ubuntu version? How do I split a tmux window? How do I expand a clojure macro? Repeat for 300 more easily google-able questions... Actually I just realized, maybe I'm too old. If that's the case, here's a great tool: http://lmgtfy.com/?q=How+do+I+check+my+Ubuntu+v…

Sometimes it takes quite a bit of effort to get the results you need.

For example when you search for something specific that uses very common words. I'm not great at searching either, often I have to read through lots of results to get the answer I'm looking for.

Having a personal repository of curated results seems like a good resource to have.

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