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Using an engineering notebook

ntietz.com

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Re: Using an engineering notebook

#31

Post by evnu »

danpalmer wrote: post #17
pjot wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, it helps to slow down my thoughts and aides deep work. I draw diagrams, connect blurbs with arrows, and “link” to other page numbers.

This is still missing the "what" for me. What do you write down about the work? Is it a plan for what you're about to work on? Is it a breakdown? Is it facts you learn as you work through something? Is it a minute by minute journal of what you've done? Is it just interesting details? Is it to-dos? Is it opinions you're trying to clarify? Diagrams I get, my desk is covered in scribbled diagrams to help me visualise so…

For me, if it's worth thinking about it, it's worth writing it down. Doesn't matter if it's a todo list I just came up with, a system diagram, whatever I am currently working on, or thoughts on a human interaction I just witnessed. The act of writing it down guides me in my thinking.

Re: Using an engineering notebook

#32

Post by wycx »

I have settled on a way to do append only notes by having a "journal" user on my xmpp server, and I take notes by sending them asciidoc formatted messages. I have been too lazy to do it so far, but I could extract the messages from the server and compile them into something more easily browsed.

Re: Using an engineering notebook

#33

Post by torginus »

This is maybe a bit of a tangent to this article,but I've tried so many pieces of tech over the years to replace pen & paper notebooks, mainly iPads and eInk based notetaking devices, like the Remarkable.

While I cannot find a concrete flaw with these things, with some of them working quite well, I just couldn't really get a feel for them - they always felt so tech-y and imprecise, that I always went back to an actual sheet of paper.

Another product design misconception I think a lot of companies make is the use of metal cases - metal feels high-end and durable as opposed to plastic I suppose, and with it being quite solid, manufacturers can make it thinner and lighter.

But it's uncomfortable to hold, and hard to manufacture complex shapes, which means these devices often end up in a case. Man I miss the 2000s when product design wasn't dead.

Re: Using an engineering notebook

#34

Post by theshrike79 »

rtpg wrote: post #25
danpalmer wrote: post #13

I was given this advice at university, but what I was always missing was what I was supposed to write down in them. The post here mentions hypotheses, but I don't do experiments for the most part. It mentions writing down in the notebook before writing code, but I can't test my notes, I can't really send my notes for code review. I guess you could use it for design, but you'd lose all the advantages of word processin…

> It mentions writing down in the notebook before writing code, but I can't test my notes, I can't really send my notes for code review. I think generally it's more about sketching the high level structure of the code. I will routinely write things like : documents = ... by_client = documents.group_by(client) for client, doc_set in by_client: for doc in doc_set: csv.write(doc) Not at all following the actual APIs I u…

I've tried that, but my brain is just going "why are you writing about doing the thing instead of, you know, DOING THE THING"?

I vastly prefer just making a working skeleton and filling that with actual code as I progress.

Re: Using an engineering notebook

#35

Post by JetSetIlly »

This is a timely article for me. I was consulting Joe Decuir's Engineering Notebooks just yesterday and wondered if these sorts of notebooks were a common thing or whether it was just Atari.

Joe Decuir was an engineer at Atari and was involved with the development of the 2600. His notebooks can be useful references for the 2600, even to this day.

https://archive.org/details/JoeDecuirEngineeringNotebook1977

https://archive.org/details/JoeDecuirEngineeringNotebook1978

Re: Using an engineering notebook

#36

Post by dirkc »

analog31 wrote: post #18
danpalmer wrote: post #13

I was given this advice at university, but what I was always missing was what I was supposed to write down in them. The post here mentions hypotheses, but I don't do experiments for the most part. It mentions writing down in the notebook before writing code, but I can't test my notes, I can't really send my notes for code review. I guess you could use it for design, but you'd lose all the advantages of word processin…

I'm a scientist. In the science world, the traditional lab notebook contained a narrative of what you were doing. You're kind of thinking out loud into it. One measure of a good notebook is if it contains sufficient information that you don't have to repeat work only because you can't figure out what you did. There are other good reasons for repeating things of course. My spouse is a lab scientist, and I've seen her…

I also keep a 'lab notebook', but I must admit that a lot of what I used to document in my notes (setting up software/compiling 3rd party deps) I now document in code (scripts, devops, etc).

I still find lots of value in keeping notes though! And sometimes miss it when I didn't keep notes.

Re: Using an engineering notebook

#39

Post by thunspa »

I've been doing this more and more over the past year, but I just write on plain white paper and throw it away after the stack on my desk gets too big.

Like the author, I don't seem to ever need to read my old notes. Instead, it works wonders as a mental bucket of sorts and I've found paper to be extremely powerful for this. I tried doing this on a Surface Pro, for example, but it was significantly less enjoyable or effective.

Now with LLMs helping me write code, planning ahead on paper is even more useful.

Re: Using an engineering notebook

#40

Post by armcat »

I’ve been doing this for the past 15 years - writing “LAZYs”, started off as just .txt files, now .md. The nice thing with it now you can search through it easily or give it to Codex
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