Notes
Dev and professional notes that may be useful to others
Why I take notes
I'm a long-time note taker, bookmarker, and keeper of swipe files. I take notes to help me remember and as a reference in the times when I do not remember. I've found that I will often remember that I've encountered a challenge before but cannot recall the solution. Searching my notes is far faster than DuckDuckGo'ing for the answer (googling is my fallback).
I am also trying to get better at following swyx's advice—if it's worth reading, it's worth taking notes on.
Tools I Use
I am a huge fan of Notational Velocity which is no longer maintained. Fortunately, NV has a spiritual successor: nvUltra. The NV approach to note storage consists of folder(s) of markdown files with an interface for rapidly searching or creating new notes.
Notes can be interlinked and you can add tags in a note's body or their filenames. I prefer tags in the file names like this:
Reference - Tips - OmniFocus - Ideas to try.md
Because all of my notes exist as markdown files, there's no lock-in or fear of losing access to my notes when the internet goes down or when a company fails.
I've recently taken to using Obsidian for longer notes, but I still generally use nvUltra to locate answers (nvu is faster + better interface). Obsidian's interface shares a lot of DNA with Visual Studio Code, so much so that I find myself missing many of my favorite vsc shortcuts.
I also bookmark and tag everything that looks even remotely useful for the future. When I'm ready to start a new project, my bookmarks are often one of the first places I start.
I've used Pinboard for over a decade. Pinboard is essentially del.icio.us 🪦, except well managed.
Buckets of Notes
Originally I started with one bucket of notes. Overtime, I decided to split the notes into personal and professional. With this repo I've created a third category: Professional—and possibly useful to others.
Over time, I may migrate more Professional notes into this repo, but it is my intention for this repo to be my default bucket for new notes.