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The software engineering notebook

winterflower.github.io

121–130 of 143 posts

Re: The software engineering notebook

#121
For engineers, I found this logbook guide which seems perfect[1]. I found this on the desk of my new job, about 1 month ago. Someone left it there and it intrigued me. I'm trying to abide to it, not religiously, but so far so good. Others might find it helpful.

[1] http://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/mindworks/Capstone%20Design/P...

Re: The software engineering notebook

#122
post #13

The commitment to taking good notes has been one of the best decisions of my life -- not just professionally. I use my standard text editor (Textmate 2), and have a "notes" project, with all manner of categories organized by folder. I take notes on articles I have read, take notes on any presentations I watch or educational courses I take, or books I read. Moreover, I now take much better in person notes -- I take th…

What does the folder structure look like?

It might be relevant: https://github.com/galfarragem/hamster-gtd

Re: The software engineering notebook

#123
post #50

I have a "notes" directory in dropbox. I use .md files, with a text editor that does some highlighting based upon the markdown. 95% of them go into what I call my "dev diary". Each day gets a new file. Any questions, answers, thoughts, etc. while programming or designing go in there. For searchability, I also add any reference Jira/Trello/etc ids. Beyond that, I have cheatsheets and checklists. Cheatsheets are short,…

What do you with screenshots or other graphics?

[deleted]

Re: The software engineering notebook

#124
post #13

The commitment to taking good notes has been one of the best decisions of my life -- not just professionally. I use my standard text editor (Textmate 2), and have a "notes" project, with all manner of categories organized by folder. I take notes on articles I have read, take notes on any presentations I watch or educational courses I take, or books I read. Moreover, I now take much better in person notes -- I take th…

I have a diametrically opposite experience instead. For me taking notes is most of the time harmful. If I need to document something it is much better to write a confluence page so everyone in the team can access it. While I'm coding taking notes breaks my flow of thoughts and I lose the momentum. Obviously I do write schematics or structures of the components on which I'm working on, but I don't consider that note taking, it is really part of the designing process and at the end the architecture will go in any case in confluence. Last but not least, I noticed that if I can just read some note easily I don't commit that information to my long term memory, so paradoxically, writing notes actually harms my memorisation process.

Re: The software engineering notebook

#126

I find it hilarious that in science and engineering using a lab or engineers notebook is common practice and VC is rare, but in software engineering VC is common and keeping a notebook is rare.

The fields could learn from each other, in the same way cycling has learnt from formula1 and medicine has learnt from aviation safety (SE could probably learn from aviation safety).

Re: The software engineering notebook

#127
I've noticed that discussing and chatting are way more productive forms of writing for me, and I've realized that it's exactly because they discourage excessive editing.

So after thinking about it for a while, I realized that the best way for me to take notes is just to have a chat room with myself, where I write things down as I do stuff or think about stuff.

The common pattern is that I start the day by writing something about what I want to do, how I plan to spend the day, maybe some reflections on how I feel about the project's direction... Then during the day I'll put some brief notes, including random ideas that I just want to get out of me... And then at the end of my workday I'll go and reflect what I did and the current status.

Then I also have a setup of Org mode documents. One is a general project management file for all the projects in my life (housing, volunteering, work, recipes, etc) and then there are notes files that are more like sprawling personal wikis or (more pretentiously) like very disorganized book drafts where I flesh out my thoughts in a more long term way or in depth way.

(About the self-chat, I also use that for writing things like blog posts; I make a first draft just by chatting, and then I spend hours reorganizing and editing.)

Re: The software engineering notebook

#128

I find it hilarious that in science and engineering using a lab or engineers notebook is common practice and VC is rare, but in software engineering VC is common and keeping a notebook is rare.

Electronic Lab Notebooks are a growing sector e.g. Findings - Lab Notebook by Findings Software SAS https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/findings-lab-notebook/id9228...

Re: The software engineering notebook

#129
post #13

The commitment to taking good notes has been one of the best decisions of my life -- not just professionally. I use my standard text editor (Textmate 2), and have a "notes" project, with all manner of categories organized by folder. I take notes on articles I have read, take notes on any presentations I watch or educational courses I take, or books I read. Moreover, I now take much better in person notes -- I take th…

Totally agree goo! I do something more or less the same as you, just to not the same extent—but I will be soon when I export my 'to watch' list from IMDB and 'to read' list from Instapaper. Since 2013 I started creating a text file almost every day in a directory structure of '../daily/2017/17-10-14.txt'. I use it as a journal (I put the current time and wrote whatever it is down), a scratchpad, a temporary todo, hab…

I'm doing almost the same thing. I have a simple script that opens a ~/Documents/devlog/20171015.txt automatically when I start working.

When I need to find something old I use fgrep on that folder. Works like a charm.

It's plain text, no defined structure. I dont't use it for TODOs as that info would get easily lost.

I use it almost everyday, specially when something different happen: how to release an old piece of software that current setup dont support anymore or how to connect to a service that I only use sporadically.

I tried some tools and apps for this, even tried to track that for a few days in Trello. eventually I gave up and went back to the plain txt file.

Re: The software engineering notebook

#130
post #52

I've been actively looking for a good tool for personal note taking, and finding lots of things that seem not-quite-right. Plain Text: Pros > Simplest, works everywhere/on everything, scales well (append forever!) Cons > Least automated, no images, no math, no code, hyperlinks depend on editor, no embedded files WYSIWYG Doc Editor (Word, Writer, etc): Pros > As easy as plain text, can do images/math/hyperlinks/embedd…

Jupyter is trivial to get up and running. I did it just a couple weeks ago and it took under 5 minutes. There is a docker image but I think I just did "pip install jupyter" and "jupyter notebook".

I’m thinking perhaps GP is referring to the fact that you can’t just quickly use Jupyter; the server has to be running, with your desired kernel, and you need to know what port it’s on and get a browser tab open on it.
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