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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

#151

Post by chris_st »

jiggunjer wrote: post #94
chris_st wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I ended up spending a lot of time thinking about the structure instead of actually thinking about the content. This is why wikis, which I originally thought were just the best things ever, seem to become useless over time. The Mac application Quiver [1] introduced me to the idea of categories, which can contain one layer of sub-category, and either categories or sub-categories can contain articles, which contain te…

Wdym useless over time? You don't need to think about structuring a wiki.

Perhaps "useless" is the wrong term -- perhaps just "wildly inconsistent" would be better (which winds up being pretty much useless, if you can't find anything).

nomel wrote:

> I think structureless is not possible, since some form of structure will grow, with lumps.

This really nails it. There will be some kinds of structures (note the plurals), particularly if more than one person is involved, since you just think... differently at different times. A minimal structure like Quiver/Obsidian just takes all those silly decisions away that wind up lumping your data into a difficult-to-access wad.

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

#152

Post by chris_st »

zolland wrote: post #101
chris_st wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I ended up spending a lot of time thinking about the structure instead of actually thinking about the content. This is why wikis, which I originally thought were just the best things ever, seem to become useless over time. The Mac application Quiver [1] introduced me to the idea of categories, which can contain one layer of sub-category, and either categories or sub-categories can contain articles, which contain te…

I actually stopped using Obsidian a few months ago. I feel like these knowledge collection/note taking applications over complicate everything. I wasn't happy with the search feature in Obsidian specifically and the fact that it forces you to add their own application specific characters/flavor to your markdown. [0] I thought about it and my minimum requirements for a knowledge graph tool are: 1. Edit files in vanill…

Wow, no directories. That kind of blows my mind. I just really appreciate some kind of high-level "directory" (for lack of a better word) rather than trying to remember some random tag to help me find something.

Reminds me (sorry, I'm a dinosaur) of the WAIS [0] days -- I had a friend who showed me some cool sites accessible through WAIS. When I asked them if there was some kind of directory to find stuff, he looked slightly annoyed and said, "You could build one, I guess." The WwW came along shortly thereafter, with lots of directories of sites, and yeah, most folks have never even heard of WAIS :-)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_area_information_server

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

#153

Post by riekus »

MrZongle2 wrote: post #45

I was disappointed that Joplin ( https://joplinapp.org/ ) wasn't included in the app list. Having used both Evernote and OneNote, I've found Joplin to be a better choice, especially when I'm bouncing between platforms. It doesn't lock you to a particular ecosystem or cloud service, and the open source app is free for use. For what it's worth, I'm not affiliated with Joplin, I'm just a user.

Also using Joplin, it is perfect for me to have everything on windows android and Linux. All syncing with nextcloud.

The only thing that bothers me it has poor search, if you want to search for 'google' 'goog' doesn't resolve any results. A bit baffled by this, you can use an * wildcard but would prefer fuzzy search

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

#154

Post by LrnByTeach »

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…

Here is my final destination after years of path work with notes saving, I been doing this for 3 months and I am extremely happy.

three parts.

1/ saving Notes in markdown files on github

2/ using static site generator to create website https://github.com/shuding/nextra

3/ hosting on Vercel for free

https://docs-site-coral.vercel.app/

The above is the sample site that was created with Nextra and hosted on Vercel, when you navigate on this site you would appreciate the simplicity of markdown files with good website navigation . Vercel hosted site will be updated as soon as you checkin .md file changes to github

All you need to do is clone this repo https://github.com/vercel/swr , npm install and run the site locally .

If you like the site, remove the files and replace with your own .md files , check-in into your own github repo , create Vercel account and it will pull your github repo and you Docs site is online .

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

#155

Post by zolland »

chris_st wrote: post #152
zolland wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually stopped using Obsidian a few months ago. I feel like these knowledge collection/note taking applications over complicate everything. I wasn't happy with the search feature in Obsidian specifically and the fact that it forces you to add their own application specific characters/flavor to your markdown. [0] I thought about it and my minimum requirements for a knowledge graph tool are: 1. Edit files in vanill…

Wow, no directories. That kind of blows my mind. I just really appreciate some kind of high-level "directory" (for lack of a better word) rather than trying to remember some random tag to help me find something. Reminds me (sorry, I'm a dinosaur) of the WAIS [0] days -- I had a friend who showed me some cool sites accessible through WAIS. When I asked them if there was some kind of directory to find stuff, he looked…

It works! But only when paired with fuzzy search for file names and grep searching file contents. I do sometimes like to just roam around my files for fun though and do remember specific file names, so naming is still important for me!

Also the tags are very deliberate.

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

#156

Post by Trixter »

I'm active in the vintage personal computing space, and I find it funny when this topic crops up every decade or so under a different name. In the 1980s, there was a entire software category of "personal knowledge management systems" where each product claimed it had the best system. "Second brain" is no different; it's a group of concepts that may or may not work for you, but as these comments show, they certainly don't work for everyone.

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

#157

Post by CuriousSkeptic »

thrower123 wrote: post #28
bodge5000 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might have meant this as a joke, but I honestly think this is a better way of doing things than a rigourously designed system of organisation and workflows and all that. There are a million ways to approach this kind of thing, and whilst browser tabs aren't nessecarily the best way, they're certainly up there

Oh, I'm absolutely not kidding. I've tried to do the OneNote thing, or get into org-mode, or manage collections of bookmarks. Too much overhead, not enough value to justify the work. So I have a browser window per "thing" that I'm dealing with, with a whole bunch of tabs, and when I'm done with the thing, the browser gets closed and the tabs go away.

This approach kind of exploded on me, and I couldn’t find any window anymore. Recently discovers tab groups, and that you can name browser windows. With those two in place I actually see some hope of recovering control.

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

#158

Post by IndexPointer »

boffinAudio wrote: post #142

Since 2003 I have printed every single interesting web site I've ever bothered to read - and some I haven't - to PDF file. Instead of Ctrl-D to bookmark, I Ctrl-P to print-to-pdf. I keep these PDF files and use them where most people would have bookmarks. The advantage is that I have an offline cache of materials (60,000+ files), a carefully curated list of stuff I like (or can be bothered to think about long enough…

I can't believe I never thought of this. I keep a huge bookmark folder with "things I might need 10 years from now", but finding things becomes a torture if you can only search by the title and not the contents. And after a few years it's likely that the page will be gone.

But why save pdfs instead of downloading the webpages?

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

#159

Post by prima-facie »

IndexPointer wrote: post #158
boffinAudio wrote: post #142

Since 2003 I have printed every single interesting web site I've ever bothered to read - and some I haven't - to PDF file. Instead of Ctrl-D to bookmark, I Ctrl-P to print-to-pdf. I keep these PDF files and use them where most people would have bookmarks. The advantage is that I have an offline cache of materials (60,000+ files), a carefully curated list of stuff I like (or can be bothered to think about long enough…

I can't believe I never thought of this. I keep a huge bookmark folder with "things I might need 10 years from now", but finding things becomes a torture if you can only search by the title and not the contents. And after a few years it's likely that the page will be gone. But why save pdfs instead of downloading the webpages?

> But why save pdfs instead of downloading the webpages?

Ages ago we had this wonderful format called MHTML which allowed you to save an entire webpage (with images and all) as a single file. This was amazing for archiving and I remember saving lots of tutorials in this format.

But the format seems to have fallen out of grace over the years to the point where it became difficult to find a browser that allows opening those old files.

PDF now seems to be the best method of archiving content. Standards like PDF/A implement a subset of the PDF standard which ensures the content will be available for the years to come.

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

#160

Post by IndexPointer »

prima-facie wrote: post #159
IndexPointer wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't believe I never thought of this. I keep a huge bookmark folder with "things I might need 10 years from now", but finding things becomes a torture if you can only search by the title and not the contents. And after a few years it's likely that the page will be gone. But why save pdfs instead of downloading the webpages?

> But why save pdfs instead of downloading the webpages? Ages ago we had this wonderful format called MHTML which allowed you to save an entire webpage (with images and all) as a single file. This was amazing for archiving and I remember saving lots of tutorials in this format. But the format seems to have fallen out of grace over the years to the point where it became difficult to find a browser that allows opening…

Chrome mobile saves to mhtml if you download a page. Chrome desktop can save to mhtml if you select "webpage, single file". And of course they open the files fine. But it's not compressed, so you'll end up with smaller files if you use pdfs.
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