Keep a programming journal • Hacker News Board

Re: Keep a programming journal

#101

Post by pingswept » Thu, Aug 30, 2012, 3:28 PM UTC

follower wrote: post #86

pingswept wrote: post #11

I've been keeping a project journal in a series of notebooks for a few years. As I've filled more and more notebooks, I miss the searchability of computerized journals. For a while, kept a text file open all the time and tried using it as a journal, but that's lousy for any kind of sketching. My most recent attempt has been a pile of Markdown files in a Github repository. I edit them directly in Github's editor and t…

I've mentioned Labradoc ( http://labradoc.com/ ) elsewhere on this thread but it seems like it might be worth you considering it too. More so, if it doesn't suit you I'd be interested to know why--given you seem to have implemented a more manual approach to what Labradoc aims to do. The major difference from what you've described is that Labradoc has a project-based rather than day-based focus. (Although there's no r…

I actually noticed your Labradoc comment earlier and took a look. It's more or less what I'm looking for, without the weirdness of being embedded in Github. There are 2 reasons I'm not switching to it right now:

1. My system already works fine.

2. The default styling of Labradoc doesn't suit me. The blue/purple links and left-aligned text have a 2005ish look to me. Those would presumably be pretty easy to fix with a CSS overlay of some sort, but that would require a little tweaking.

But still, Labradoc looks like pretty much the same solution that I came up with, so I like it!

One suggestion: make the example have a link or screenshots to something that shows the Markdown side of things. Is there an editor? What does it look like? Even a screenshot tour would help lure people in.

Re: Keep a programming journal

#102

Post by ky3 » Thu, Aug 30, 2012, 4:09 PM UTC

Feoh wrote: post #4

I wish the article had a bit more meat to it. Not that this is a sin but he's just parroting things said in about 1000 other places by 1000 other people. Pen and paper good. Check. Daily journal. Check.

I outlined the journal must-haves if you're conducting a programming experiment:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4448853

Re: Keep a programming journal

#103

Post by meej » Thu, Aug 30, 2012, 4:55 PM UTC

mej10 wrote: post #99

meej wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which iPad note-taking apps have you tried? There are definitely a lot of terrible ones out there. Notability, however, is absolutely fantastic. I've been using it with a Cosmonaut stylus since late May and I haven't used a paper notebook since. Rather than failure, it's exceeded all my expectations. The only missing feature is handwriting recognition, and well, I wouldn't have that with paper, either.

I take pictures of my notes and post them on Evernote. It has surprisingly good handwriting recognition.

I did try uploading my exported notes to Evernote, but it's handwriting recognition doesn't work on PDFs. I suppose I could try screenshots, though.

Re: Keep a programming journal

#104

Post by mukaiji » Wed, Sep 05, 2012, 9:24 PM UTC

donut wrote: post #91

aero142 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking of pen and paper... When I was in college, Dijkstra had given a talk for the class a few years before his death, and my instructor passed out his notes. They were on a non-ruled piece of paper with perfectly drawn bullet points for each item. If he made a mistake, he would scratch the word out with a near perfect rectangle. The neatness and clarity was striking. I think it was the only handout in my entire t…

Dijkstra's notes are available here: http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/ They are hand written as you said.

Thank you for the excellent link!