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Ask HN: How do you track what you learn?

by pipu on 2/24/16, 5:16 AM with 9 comments

I would like to know your recommendation for a tool to track what you've learned this day/week/month etc.

Some sort of a service where you could easily write notes about the stuff you came accross while developing something.

For instance if I find a very useful link that shows me the correct way to do something, I would like to write that down somewhere with a simple explanation using my own words.

  • by arrmn on 2/24/16, 10:26 AM

    A few weeks ago there was a post[0][1] on hn from a guy who wrote a daily til for a whole year.

    I stole his idea[1] and created jekyll blog on Github, I can just create a new .md file and put the things for the til down. With the new upload feature from github you can also just write the md file locally and just drop it in.

    I like it so far, just need to get in the habit of writing it down daily.

    [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11068902 [1] https://github.com/jbranchaud/til [2] http://arminmsg.github.io/blog/til/ http://arminmsg.github.io/blog/til/

  • by kennyfrc on 2/26/16, 6:37 AM

    Apart from keeping track, a related problem I'm facing is making sure that I am able to re-implement what I'm doing.

    So what I do is the following:

    1. I break down what I've learned into steps or checklists

    2. I then put these into Scrivener

    3. Each topic that I've learned has it's own page

    Here's a small example from my notes around PDF generation + attachments in Rails. This is just the overall picture -- each bullet point expands to another bunch of notes which has actual code details.

    * build a mailer with mail(to:, from: content:)

    * build a controller what delivers that content

    * the controller should render a notice that says that the post has been successfully created <via a respond_to method>

    * make sure that you configure the SMTP settings

    * build a pdf creator (PrawnPDF::Base) => this initializes a PDF w/ some view_context

    * configure a MIME type within config/initializers

    * configure a controller that triggers a respond_to for this

    * add a button that links to think Printable receipt

    * save the PDF into some foldere

    * insert a paperclip file type into the migration

    * add this intot he user model

    * go back to the PDF / order controller and then add a custom path to save the PDF (pdf.render file…)

    * then save that file inside teh database & set it to the certificate

  • by hanniabu on 2/24/16, 1:12 PM

    I usually just keep notes in plain text files and save the likes in an organized bookmark directory of folders so I can easily find relevant links. I do like what the other commenter suggested about the markdown files on github though, but I'm not sure what the best way to navigate those would be.

  • by julio-r on 2/24/16, 8:30 PM

    I generally use Google Keep that syncs between my devices, but I'm not completely happy with it.

  • by zwetan on 2/24/16, 5:47 AM

    personally I use a local wiki to keep notes, links, research etc.

    https://github.com/gollum/gollum