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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

#61

Post by varispeed »

judofyr wrote: post #11

I've tried to incorporate some of the ideas of the "second brain" and it didn't really give me that much. My lessons: 1. It's always super helpful to write things down. Taking notes from what I read/learn is a great way to verify that I understand it. It sharpens my thinking. 2. However, maintaining the "second brain" is a lot work. It's not only about "linking" together notes. You also need to maintain some consiste…

I am not going anywhere without my reMarkable 2. This is just crazy convenient tool for dumping thoughts and trying ideas. E.g. when I design something. I'd draw abstract boxes and other shapes, then add a new layer, make connections, another layer some notes. You can freely move things around or erase with a pen. I think my productivity gone up like 10x. I especially like the fact that I can just leave my laptop, sit somewhere quiet and just write and draw without distractions.

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

#62

Post by tconfrey »

throw0101a wrote: post #48

Brings to mind Umberto Echo's "Vegetal and Mineral Memory: The Future of Books" at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in 2003 (PDF): > WE HAVE THREE TYPES OF MEMORY. The first one is organic, which is the memory made of flesh and blood and the one administrated by our brain. The second is mineral, and in this sense mankind has known two kinds of mineral memory: millennia ago, this was the memory represented by clay tablets…

Thats a cool take!

I'm currently reading 'Remember' by Lisa Genova[0]. She points out that we have 'Temporal' memory for events in our lives, 'Semantic' memory for facts and figures (divorced from when we learned them), and 'muscle' memory for things we do with out body. So yeah, 3 types ;-)

https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/54895704-remember

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

#63

Post by tconfrey »

mgdv wrote: post #50

I've used lots of 'note' apps but ended up with 2 parts that work for me 1. A physical notebook for quick capture 2. A single markdown document which I search through or edit with Vim I have simple vim macro that prints today's date bound to a key. This makes it easy to write notes for that day. It's worked well for the last few years

Agreed, as I was mentioning in a separate thread, I use emacs/org-mode for text. With org you can layer on any other kind of process you like (tags, dates, TODOs, tables etc).

I'd love to find some simple/automate-able way to integrate output from phone/notepad & stylus system.

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

#64

Post by whimsicalism »

andrewljohnson wrote: post #57

Nah, he should have stopped with the first diagram. Google plus the internet is your second brain and is the optimal approach for almost everyone. This heavy approach seems like make work that will waste time, and the data will rot, leading to calcified and inaccurate knowledge.

Google plus the internet only works if you're learning about things that are:

1. Public (if it's non-public systems, information, etc. that you are learning then Google can't help you). 2. and either shallow or of one of a small subset of areas that has in-depth discussion online.

There are plenty of situations in knowledge work where Google will not cut it.

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

#65

Post by whimsicalism »

genghisjahn wrote: post #27

My second brain keeps moving. For example, I have a great setup with Notability on an iPad. Except after a few months, I start typing stuff into Workflowy. No reason, I just reach for a different tool. A few months later I'm in a random text file and then back to Notability. I don't know why I do this. One thing that sorta helps is implementing the Jonny Decimal System so that all the different pieces can be indexed.…

Hoenstly for me the issue is I want someone to create the "killer" note-taking app.

I don't want to be restricted in how I am taking down information. Sometimes, I want to draw on a tablet, sometimes I want to write markdown, sometimes I want to do workflowy style outlining.

I shouldn't be restricted in that way!

So far, the only one I've been able to settle on for about 1.5 years now is Obsidian.

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

#66

Post by CodeGlitch »

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.

I'm also a heavy Joplin user! The feature to sync with common file backup services (Dropbox, OneDrive, etc) is really useful, and doesn't feel like I'm locking my second brain into someone else's walled garden.

Amazed it wasn't mentioned in this article.

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

#67

Post by robofanatic »

genghisjahn wrote: post #27

My second brain keeps moving. For example, I have a great setup with Notability on an iPad. Except after a few months, I start typing stuff into Workflowy. No reason, I just reach for a different tool. A few months later I'm in a random text file and then back to Notability. I don't know why I do this. One thing that sorta helps is implementing the Jonny Decimal System so that all the different pieces can be indexed.…

Same thing happened to me with grocery list apps. I must have tried all the grocery list apps in the app store and have finally settled with the old-fashioned but the best app --- Paper & Pencil. For me the simplicity of paper and pencil and quick access of it during the actual shopping just beats all the cool features you get in a smartphone app.

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

#68

Post by abeppu »

I keep seeing articles like this and I keep being a bit disappointed that they mostly adopt techniques that were developed for general knowledge workers ("personal knowledge management system") or ideas by/for writers or researchers, and don't seriously think about how to treat/manage code.

A brain isn't just about knowledge; it's also a set of skills, capacities, patterns of behavior. Software is an area it's possible to capture capacities in the form of code that actually does stuff. This article makes brief mention of code snippets, but only really to remark on the kinds of metadata that one should keep to find them later.

What I have yet to see a satisfying description of, and what I sometimes try to work towards myself, is a mashup of a library with a knowledge management system, where notes link to code, and both go together in a common repo. However, depending on the kinds of things one stores, the software/library side can stumble over some challenges, and I haven't quite figured out how to keep the overhead spent on maintaining it low. One might have small pieces of code in many languages, or different versions of the same language (e.g. making notes about macros in scala 2.x vs scala 3), and notes made at different times might incidentally become dependent on differing specific versions of library (e.g. ideas in statistical analysis that use pandas).

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

#69

Post by Olreich »

The best approach is to not build a knowledge management system for yourself until you need it. When you've forgotten something you need a few times, maybe it's time to set up a "common notes" file that you can check first for those things that won't stick. Then when that gets unwieldy, maybe split it into a folder of organized notes with a grep or fuzzy search in front of it (or one of those note-taking apps). When that stops working for you, pull out bigger guns and build something that works specifically for how you use it.

By waiting until you actually need it, you skip a lot of the work in maintaining a knowledge base you don't use, and you only build out the bits you actually need, instead of wasting a bunch of effort on things that sound nice, but won't actually help.

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

#70

Post by ssully »

judofyr wrote: post #11

I've tried to incorporate some of the ideas of the "second brain" and it didn't really give me that much. My lessons: 1. It's always super helpful to write things down. Taking notes from what I read/learn is a great way to verify that I understand it. It sharpens my thinking. 2. However, maintaining the "second brain" is a lot work. It's not only about "linking" together notes. You also need to maintain some consiste…

I started using OneNote this year. I create a weekly "Note" where I throw all my notes in during a week. This includes a weekly ToDo checklist, a note section per meeting, and then random thoughts, code/log snippits, or whatever else I need.

It's not perfect, but it's the best solution I've found so far. I've tried every note taking method out there and I always fall off after a few months. I think this is working for me because it has the quality of a general wiki, but I start fresh every week, so I don't have to worry about carrying over or linking "knowledge" for the most part.

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