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The software engineering notebook

winterflower.github.io

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Re: The software engineering notebook

#61

Post by Koshkin »

asciimo wrote: post #28
colechristensen wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true and somewhat infuriating. I have a $700 computer in my pocket and the best way to write a grocery list is on a post-it found in the kitchen drawer. I think it comes down to the human interface of a touch screen being slow, frustrating, and generally inefficient.

It's amazing that we have accepted this user interface for as long as we have. Imagine if touching your paper notebook the wrong way could accidentally erase it or share it with your mom.

> share it with your mom

O horror!

Re: The software engineering notebook

#62

Post by baldfat »

I currently use Boost and I like it, but I miss the old PIMs of the early 00s. I keep wanting to make my own old school pim as a pet project but that always stays in the back. It would be ncurses based :)

I started with old wikis and then a Russian PIM that I can't remember and then Google Notebook. Evernote was always a hit o miss the sync never was good for me.

Re: The software engineering notebook

#63

Post by Koshkin »

nvarsj wrote: post #40
colechristensen wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true and somewhat infuriating. I have a $700 computer in my pocket and the best way to write a grocery list is on a post-it found in the kitchen drawer. I think it comes down to the human interface of a touch screen being slow, frustrating, and generally inefficient.

Get a Samsung Note 8. Use wacom pen to take notes. Carrying around dead trees is archaic.

Reminds me of the anecdote about the Russians using a pencil in space (vs. a $1000 pen specifically designed to work in weightlessness).

Re: The software engineering notebook

#64

Post by Guyag »

dageshi wrote: post #53

http://tiddlywiki.com/ Sits in a browser tab, insanely quick to use which is the most important thing. Consider it perfect for taking notes. I use seperate systems for todo and project management (the project management one I wrote myself)

Seconded. What I was looking for in a note-taking system was something wiki based, and this has a really nice take on the concept.

Re: The software engineering notebook

#65

Post by warent »

dageshi wrote: post #53

http://tiddlywiki.com/ Sits in a browser tab, insanely quick to use which is the most important thing. Consider it perfect for taking notes. I use seperate systems for todo and project management (the project management one I wrote myself)

Cool, I've never heard of this before. Completely blew my mind when I saw it's a single html file that I can use offline! I love it and definitely will start using it.

Re: The software engineering notebook

#66

Post by crispinb »

raoulj wrote: post #15
forkLding wrote: post #2

Is there any opensource things that can be a software engineering notebook or journal that is easy to use and painless?

Not opensource but hard to beat Quiver: http://happenapps.com/ Edit: I take that back, Boostnote looks pretty good!

I'm not that concerned about Quiver not being open source, as its note storage format is simple & documented json. Should there be a reason to move away from Quiver, it would be pretty simple to construct a way of transferring notes (assuming the destination is as transparent). In the meantime, it's quite a pleasure to use: very fast, well-presented, and with carefully-considered interactions.

I must give Boostnote a try. On the face of it, I would think an engineering notebook, to be used daily for large amounts of stuff, would be a paradigmatic case for a native app like Quiver rather than electron. But then there's Atom & vscode so maybe not? And I'm a bit uncomfortable with Boostnote's copyright transfer for pull requests (https://github.com/BoostIO/Boostnote/blob/master/contributin...). But then again, I pay little attention to copyright matters so perhaps just haven't noticed if this is common in open source. And it's clearly nevertheless more open than Quiver.

Re: The software engineering notebook

#67

Post by seltzered_ »

When I started my first 'engineering' job at a chip startup over a decade ago, I remember being given a leather blue notebook with gold lettering titled 'ENGINEERING NOTEBOOK'. It was great for focusing on a single project and especially made sense for areas beyond code like drawing electrical schematics, but over time I've become addicted to digital approaches.

These days? I rely heavily on Trello for personal projects - organize things by keeping a separate Done board (list for every month) for the project for times I want to flip back through older work done. Also keep paper notebooks around for times when I want to sketch ideas out.

Additionally there's a 'rhizomatic frankenstack' of nvAlt+simplenote / pinboard / markdown files in project folders etc. I keep wanting to set up something where it's all searchable and ideally dream of something like federated wiki with a lot more UI polish.

[1]: term from Venkat Rao's post http://mailchi.mp/ribbonfarm/frankenstacks-and-rhizomes?e=96...

Re: The software engineering notebook

#68

Post by dageshi »

warent wrote: post #65
dageshi wrote: post #53

http://tiddlywiki.com/ Sits in a browser tab, insanely quick to use which is the most important thing. Consider it perfect for taking notes. I use seperate systems for todo and project management (the project management one I wrote myself)

Cool, I've never heard of this before. Completely blew my mind when I saw it's a single html file that I can use offline! I love it and definitely will start using it.

I think you do need to install a plugin for your browser to save changes to disk, but beyond that it's pain free.

Re: The software engineering notebook

#69

Post by barrkel »

I knew what I wanted in a digital notebook, so I spent an afternoon writing one. This:

* no explicit saving or loading, everything automatically persisted as plain text

* infinite persistent undo / replay of text entry, for retracing steps; can double as work logging; this uses a log file alongside the plain text; this also lets text be deleted without being lost, which helps with clutter

* "most recently edited first" page order, so you can forget about those old pages

* minimal ceremony to create a new page; use the first line as the title

* quick searching and navigation in time and space, using keyboard

https://github.com/barrkel/scratch

Re: The software engineering notebook

#70

Post by irl_zebra »

barrkel wrote: post #69

I knew what I wanted in a digital notebook, so I spent an afternoon writing one. This: * no explicit saving or loading, everything automatically persisted as plain text * infinite persistent undo / replay of text entry, for retracing steps; can double as work logging; this uses a log file alongside the plain text; this also lets text be deleted without being lost, which helps with clutter * "most recently edited firs…

Nice! This is basically Notes on MacOS, which seems to basically do this (minus infinite undo/redo). I use Notes extensively and it works really well.
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