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How to build a second brain as a software developer

aseemthakar.com

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Re: How to build a second brain as a software developer

#111

Post by jrm4 »

dimal wrote: post #108

Strange that Obsidian was only an honorable mention. For developers, there is no other choice. It has vim mode! My second brain is in Obsidian, and it’s glorious. It’s taken me a while to put enough time into learning things, but now I can see that the power it provides (through plugins and the developer API) is astounding. But it’s interesting to see that he’s using it for completely different things than me. For ex…

Honestly, strange that anything that doesn't give you full and complete access, in plaintext/Markdown or similar is even included. Obsidian and/or Zim-Wiki for the win.

Re: How to build a second brain as a software developer

#113

Post by PaulStatezny »

mabbo wrote: post #23

I recently read "Getting Things Done"[0] and began incorporating what I learned into my simple second brain. And the results are kind of ridiculously good for me. I built my whole system on a Google Sheet, but I'm experimenting with building myself an App instead- something I would never have been able to accomplish or even been willing to start if I didn't have this second brain helping me. The lessons I've learned…

5 or 6 years ago, I got big into Getting Things Done. I definitely gained real-life wisdom, but eventually I stopped because following David Allen's methodology was taking multiple hours a day.

Do you find that it's taking a ton of time for you? Or maybe you're doing a loose interpretation of the system?

Re: How to build a second brain as a software developer

#114

Post by forgotmypw17 »

I use textfiles...

Some are lists, like todo.txt

Some are individual topics, brainstorms, etc.

For organizing them, I put hashtags like #food inside.

Even thousands upon thousands of textfiles (which I'm nowhere near) grep quickly, archive and backup quickly, and transfer to other systems quickly, without lock-in or putting my eggs into someone else's basket.

I can even build my own UI on top of it... First, index them into a SQLite, then generate some HTML from it, and have a form which puts another textfile back into the directory. Best of all: the UI never changes without my consent.

After getting burned repeatedly by third-party systems with stupid UI changes, data migrations, just plain shutting down, leaking my data, your version is out of date, and your OS is not compatible with our new version, and your device is not compatible with the new OS version, etc., there's no way I'm using a third-party system for this ever again.

Re: How to build a second brain as a software developer

#115

Post by 6510 »

Make a blog, consider your future self the most stubborn and unreasonable audience possible and convince yourself you did a terrible job living up to the expectations. This guy is always elaborating on the obvious and skipping just those much needed details you were looking for.

The only thing I got right was to title creative outburst with strings of random characters created by slapping the keyboard. You should just open some of those from time to time just to see what is inside.

Re: How to build a second brain as a software developer

#116

Post by skobovm »

I think that ultimately a “second brain” system belongs at the OS level — as opposed to application — as it can greatly reduce friction from an interaction standpoint (e.g. double click iPhone power button to access your “brain” as opposed to pulling up a NFC credit card). I even went as far as getting the system concept patented while at Microsoft some years back: https://patents.google.com/patent/US20180349497A1/en

Re: How to build a second brain as a software developer

#117

Post by TranquilMarmot »

forgotmypw17 wrote: post #114

I use textfiles... Some are lists, like todo.txt Some are individual topics, brainstorms, etc. For organizing them, I put hashtags like #food inside. Even thousands upon thousands of textfiles (which I'm nowhere near) grep quickly, archive and backup quickly, and transfer to other systems quickly, without lock-in or putting my eggs into someone else's basket. I can even build my own UI on top of it... First, index th…

I've switched to doing this, too. I've ping-ponged between Evernote, OneNote, Obsidian, Notion, Confluence, and probably half a dozen other tools over the years.

Now I just write markdown files and store them in a hierarchical folder structure (never more than three folders deep!). I use VSCode to write everything which gives basic formatting for italics, bold, and code highlighting as well as an outline of the headings. You can click on links to go to other files. It has a preview feature if you want to see embedded images or videos or HTML. I use an extension that lets you edit draw.io diagrams and embed them without leaving the editor (https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=hediet.v...) Global search across all notes is instant. I have a few node.js scripts I've written to take care of automating some tasks, and since it's all markdown parsing it is easy with a library.

I've even been built a VSCode extension to show all of the markdown files in a folder in a webview and lets you organize them on a grid (I'll probably release this + make it open source once some bugs are ironed out).

Best part is, it's all just text files in git. I can read the formatted markdown files on github (and edit them in _any_ browser with https://vscode.dev/ !!!). It all works offline and syncing can be done with a click of a button.

Re: How to build a second brain as a software developer

#118

Post by andreilys »

forgotmypw17 wrote: post #114

I use textfiles... Some are lists, like todo.txt Some are individual topics, brainstorms, etc. For organizing them, I put hashtags like #food inside. Even thousands upon thousands of textfiles (which I'm nowhere near) grep quickly, archive and backup quickly, and transfer to other systems quickly, without lock-in or putting my eggs into someone else's basket. I can even build my own UI on top of it... First, index th…

Agreed, I've been burned too many times by companies getting acquired or deprecating features that I relied on.

Open source tools might not be as polished as Roam Research or whatever other fad is going on at the time, but I know they are more likely to stand the test of time.

My personal setup is creating markdown files with vimwiki and using fzf for file search. Occasionally I'll use https://obsidian.md to visualize my knowledge graph but otherwise I don't depend on it.

Re: How to build a second brain as a software developer

#119

Post by johnnylambada »

I have a simple system. For every “project” I’m involved in i make a new Google folder and at the top of it i make a notes doc. The document has a table at the top filled with pertinent information about the project, and then just below that I take notes for every day. Every day that I work on that project at least. Yesterdays notes get pushed below today’s notes and I just move forward like that. I just search Google docs for keywords and find them in my notes from days weeks or months ago. The nice thing about Google docs as I can take screen captures and just stuff them in the doc
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