9 ms·

A Year of Developer Journals with jrnl.sh

186 points by carlchenet 9y ago

cakeface 9y ago
This is a great practice and I encourage all devs to try it. I just learned of the jrnl tool but I use a very similar command line / text / file approach. I have a few shell scripts for starting a new entry which I keep in a new file within the directory. I also commit it all to a git repo.
- DelightOne 9y ago
  Are you happy with it? What are your pain points?
jjude 9y ago
Similar to what is described, I keep a note of all errors I get while developing. I started this practice after realizing how often I search for the same error. Keeping a log of the errors and how I solved it saves me so much of time. I blogged about it here: https://jjude.com/flask-errors/ https://jjude.com/flask-errors/ Taking notes also makes me to conduct a thoughtful retro of what I have done.
rickcarlino 9y ago
Thanks for posting my article! I hope it is of use to the HN community.
- carlchenet 9y ago
  you're welcome :)
- FRex 9y ago
  The parts about no complicated file formats, ease of backup, keyboard only, fast, easy to use, text only, etc. strike close to home for me because this is what I also desired, to the point that I've written my own program to keep various notes. It also had to be portable (Windows and Linux) because at the time I had another weaker laptop that had to run Fedora and I wanted to use it there too. I just couldn't find such a program, everything was bad, not portable or 'rich' (aka images, styles, etc. aka needs mouse or has a complex file format).
memorythought 9y ago
Does anyone know of a tool like jrnl.sh that integrates with GPG for encryption?
- Cthulhu_ 9y ago
  Would it be hard to wrap it in a script that does that for you? I'm not familiar with GPG but I can imagine a smart hacker made it so that you could basically pipe it through.
  - memorythought 9y ago
    True, not particularly difficult. At the moment though I just keep GPG encrypted text files if I handle encryption independently of jrnl then I lose a lot of the value of it like being able to search by tag. There was some discussion of including it here https://github.com/maebert/jrnl/issues/262 https://github.com/maebert/jrnl/issues/262 but it looks like they might have decided against it.
- zeveb 9y ago
  You can use org-mode and EasyPG Assistant: 1. Create a file foo.org.gpg 2. Put this in the first line (you can list multiple PGP keys if you like): -*- mode: org; epa-file-encrypt-to: ("PGP KEY ID HERE") -*- 3. Profit!
- atmosx 9y ago
  Check the vim journal plugin https://github.com/jmcantrell/vim-journal https://github.com/jmcantrell/vim-journal
purplecones 9y ago
I love this! I use the Terminal and VIM every day and really enjoy tools that fit within that workflow. I didn't even know about this project when I started building a similar tool (with the same name!).
- corobo 9y ago
  I have a relative path set up for my jrnl: "this": "./notes.txt" which I've aliased: note=jrnl this if I'm doing something that I get pulled away from it's a quick "note was working on the flux capacitor in somefile" .gitignore the notes file as desired
  - gknoy 9y ago
    Can you share more about how you set up relative paths? Is that a bash alias?
    - corobo 9y ago
      Sorry I completely missed that bit! The relative path part is set up in your jrnl config usually ~/.jrnl_config
- bphogan 9y ago
  You might want to look at vimwiki if you haven't already. https://github.com/vimwiki/vimwiki https://github.com/vimwiki/vimwiki
Cthulhu_ 9y ago
I noticed a colleague wrote down a basic work log every day, just a high level approach to what he did during the day. I'm interested to try it myself, have done so for a couple of days. I've used Day One, a (iirc paid) mac app, very simple to use for quick blurbs. It also has a CLI, bit awkward to use maybe (`dayone2 new "text here`).
- j_s 9y ago
  Two weeks ago: Keeping a Lab Notebook | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15704354 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15704354 Yesterday: Joplin – A note-taking and to-do app with builds for desktop, mobile, terminal | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15815040 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15815040 Both have recommendations for the process and tools.
LeicaLatte 9y ago
Very nice!
ppeetteerr 9y ago
The tool is perhaps less important than the practice. I keep a journal with entries for every time I am blocked by an issue I cannot solve in my head. The process of writing it down, doing a pro/con list, working out the solution in writing, etc, helps unblock it. It's not so much about posterity as it is about unblocking issues and moving forward in the most sensible way.
pmatos 9y ago
I wonder what's the difference between using this or org-mode...
- corobo 9y ago
  One is the one you know and enjoy using, the other is not your preferred method. The world was beyond the emacs era and into the GUI editor when I started developing so it's a hump I've not been willing to climb, jrnl works well for me
  - zeveb 9y ago
    > The world was beyond the emacs era and into the GUI editor Emacs is a GUI editor (e.g. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5a/Emacs-screenshot.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5a/Emacs-sc...), and the world still hasn't progressed beyond it. I'd love to be using something better than emacs, because it really is old & crufty, but literally no other environment is as powerful, as extensible and as pleasant to use.
    - eddieroger 9y ago
      > pleasant to use. That is a matter of opinion, which is what the OP before you was trying to point out. I know emacs, and use it as well when I'm in a shell environment, but I prefer to use Atom in a desktop environment where I may be copying and pasting from other apps. Pleasant is an opinion, which negates right and wrong.
      - rpdillon 9y ago
        > where I may be copying and pasting from other apps Is Atom better with copying and pasting certain kinds of content than Emacs?
        gknoy 9y ago
        It depends on your Atom config and your Emacs config, I imagine. When I paste things into Atom or Jetbrains' Webstorm, my javascript usually gets auto-indented to The Right Place. Atom even did that when I _reordered_ lines, which was especially neat as I hadn't had Webstorm do it. This isn't something that my Emacs will do. I'd be _very_ surprised if there weren't some module, script, or Emacs configuration that I could use (or write) to get this same behavior. After all, Emacs' "Tab to The Right Indentation" was something that blew my mind years ago. (Disclaimer: I have used Atom, but prefer Webstorm. I use Emacs, but only for Git things and the occasional quick edit.)
lars512 9y ago
I began using a Github wiki this way. I like writing in markdown, and scaffolded some basic navigation between days, weeks, projects and meeting minutes. It’s been super helpful. I upgraded from billet journaling after finding that a paper journal was not a good enough reference later.
- sunsetMurk 9y ago
  care to share more about this setup? this sounds easy and like something I may actually get myself to "commit" to doing regularly. heh
  - j_s 9y ago
    This would definitely help keep the contributions graph green!
otterpro 9y ago
I keep a journal using text files and Vim, but it is a combination of notes and journal. Instead of chronological order, I use text files based on the subject/topic. For example, I have a text file (journal) just for "Javascript" and another for "React". In fact, I even have notes on "journaling system", so I'm updating it as of now, writing an entry about "jrnl.sh". ON each text file, I'd write down what I learned, as well as snippets and URL of websites I have encountered. I don't use "tags" that often, because sometimes I'd forget the tags, or often it is hard to maintain them. I always have a Vim of notes/journals open, and I use ctrl-p and grep to add/read/search entries quickly. I think I might have about 400 (EDIT: over 1000) text files. Everything is saved to a git repo. Certain notes are published automatically as blog posts Hugo (by adding front matter, etc). I also keep a personal journal in a traditional chronological order, which is a single "journal2017.txt" file. I also recommend using private git repo, not public, since it may contain some of your personal information, and private thoughts. For the non-technical person (i.e. not into Vim or Emacs), I'd recommend Notational Velocity (nvAlt specifically) on Mac. I'd be using it, only if it had vim keybinding. It syncs online to SimpleNote, and it makes journaling really easy.
- Diederich 9y ago
  Yes. I have been doing a simplified variant of this for over 20 years now. (The git integration is newer than that :) It's easy, functional enough and works quite well.
- jeiriei28828 9y ago
  I was doing this in vim and syncing to Dropbox When my employer switched to Macs, I started using ia Writer and iCloud I like that I can write on phone or laptop. And all my old thought files are right there I still carry a notepad and mechanical pencil too. Sometimes the muscle memory and itch to “just write” demands it
geraldbauer 9y ago
FYI: A while a ago I published a plain text (standard) format for journals called journal.txt. See https://journaltxt.github.io https://journaltxt.github.io Happy writing in your journals.
JustSomeNobody 9y ago
I got started keeping a dev journal by logging bugs I fixed. I would document the problem, recreate steps (if QA supplied none), what I thought was the problem, what was the actual problem and finally how I fixed it. I also kept a note of where in the source the bug was found. Sure, there are automated was to do this, but we didn't use those at the time and, well, it led to a good habit, so I'm happy. Sadly, as much as I hoped it would, it hasn't translated into a good habit of writing a personal journal.
taternuts 9y ago
jrnl is cool! I had a good time half-cloning it in node for practice/fun a while back https://github.com/Robert-Wett/journal https://github.com/Robert-Wett/journal
miobrien 9y ago
This looks pretty cool. Installing it now. More generally, I've been using Quiver for about a year. Highly recommended. http://happenapps.com/ http://happenapps.com/
atmosx 9y ago
I keep an “engineering logbook”. I surely helps me put things into perspective, I can’t say that it made me more “productive”, but it sure raises awareness on issues and this is enough. I prefer pen and paper by far, so I ordered a personalised notebook, it is pretty good looking, most wouldn't touch it, but I'm planning on doing a collection of them. By personalised I mean that it has my name on it and reads "Engineering Logbook #1". I ordered this book from Stamford Notebooks[1]. No affiliation, but they're I'm planning to ask some customisations when I order "#2". [1] https://www.stamfordnotebooks.co.uk/ https://www.stamfordnotebooks.co.uk/
- vanzorn 9y ago
  Ran out of ink, did we? Leucchterm 1917 notebooks are awesome for logging / bullet notebooks - especially the dot grid ones. On the digital side, I was inspired to start using Org mode by following Sacha Chua's map approach: http://sachachua.com/blog/2014/01/tips-learning-org-mode-emacs/ http://sachachua.com/blog/2014/01/tips-learning-org-mode-ema...
  - atmosx 9y ago
    I used quite a few digital Journals. I still keep a personal, private one, encrypted with GPG using vim and some basic automation via shell. I rarely write there. I like writing and have a lot to write about but I prefer physical journals by far... My handwriting is ugly too but I won't give up!
    - 50CNT 9y ago
      Have you tried the palmer method[0] in regards to handwriting? [0]http://palmermethod.com/ http://palmermethod.com/
      - atmosx 9y ago
        Nope. Thanks for sharing, I'll definitely look at it, as I'm looking for ways to improve both my handwriting and note-taking.
sridca 9y ago
I find that mind maps capture context and information better than linear logs. Any one else use mind maps on a daily basis?
- aryehof 9y ago
  In my case I just want to just capture information. Not think of context/categorization/connections. Global search then makes anything from the past instantly accessible, and I don't need to remember "how or where" I saved it.
tc7 9y ago
Very cool. I've been keeping a plaintext worklog at the day job to help with time-tracking. Logging time in our system as I go is slow and painful, so I just write it down daily and enter it all at end of week (month :|). I have a file for each month (e.g. `2017-12-timelog`), it stays open all day, and I just prepend entries like: Dec 1 Fri 9 - 10: emails/updates - 11:30: BB-X10 make the list update async - 3:30: hacker news - 5: BB-X10 unit tests I'm going to try jrnl for this use case -- feels like it'll be even simpler.
WA 9y ago
I track what I worked on in a text file, and more importantly, what decisions related to my business I made on this day. If something comes up that requires a bit of thought, I simply “discuss” it in free text form. It works mostly as a brain dump. I rarely read older entries. But it’s good to know that I could look things up later.
submeta 9y ago
This looks great. - Is there a way to prevent traces / entries in bash history?
- deivid 9y ago
  Put a space before running the command.
  - karlding 9y ago
    For bash users, that assumes that the HISTCONTROL [0] environment variable is set to ignorespace (or ignoreboth). [0] https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/html_node/Bash-Variables.html https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/html_node/Bash-Vari...
jcrawfordor 9y ago
I work in devops support for an under-development software project. At request of the developers, I started keeping up a page in our wiki where, whenever something broke that affected the developers, I just logged what happened, why, and what I'm doing to prevent it happening again. The developers really like this so they feel more in the loop about system issues, but it turns out that I really like it because it's just really useful to have that log. I don't want to keep the wiki page super busy, so I now keep a text file with basically a much more verbose version of the same thing. What happened, what I tried, what I eventually found was the root cause, how I fixed it, and what I'm changing to prevent a repeat. This has two big advantages. First, the obvious one is that when things act up I can sometimes find details on a previous incident that I don't remember very well. The second and I think even greater advantage, though, is that it forces me to actually think seriously about the root cause and preventative measures every single time, instead of just fixing the immediate problem and then going on to the next thing in a rush.
- yjftsjthsd-h 9y ago
  Mine is a text for called "problems" that lists things that I've has to fix, each with a symptom list (including error codes and log output so it's easy to search), root cause where known, steps to fix, and date+time of every known occurrence. Partially helpful because some errors reoccurr.
- karlding 9y ago
  That's basically what postmortems are! For those unfamiliar with the term, postmortems are a written account of an incident, its impact, the actions taken to resolve resolve it, root causes, and identifying any follow-up actions to prevent the incident from recurring. I think postmortems should be a valuable learning opportunity for the entire company, and are by no means a punishment. In an organization that fosters "blameless culture," this allows the organization to grow and to identify and fix a weakness. Google's SRE book [0] also talks a bit about this in the chapter about Postmortems. [0] https://landing.google.com/sre/book https://landing.google.com/sre/book
LVB 9y ago
I wanted to journal more but struggled to remember to do so. A simple hack for me was to take a page from Pomodoro an install a countdown timer (I happen to use https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/activity-timer/id808647808?mt=12 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/activity-timer/id808647808?m...). Every 30 minutes I'm reminded to capture what I've been doing recently. Slowly I've been getting better at updating ahead of the reminder.
zbentley 9y ago
Utterly tangential, pedantic, and pointless pet peeve: people giving projects a "file extension-ish" name (e.g. jrnl.sh) that does not correspond to the language in which the program was written. It's a Python script, not a shell script. And yes, I know that the ".sh" probably refers to the fact that you use it from the shell, not the implementing language. I said it was pedantic, didn't I?
- zeckalpha 9y ago
  It's not the name, it's a domain name: http://jrnl.sh http://jrnl.sh
  - nichochar 9y ago
    Isn't the domain name the name though?
    - papa-whisky 9y ago
      The name is clearly just `jrnl`: https://github.com/maebert/jrnl https://github.com/maebert/jrnl
- spraak 9y ago
  I read it more like a word, like "journalish" similar to bit.ly etc.
ElijahLynn 9y ago
I do this too! Not everyday, because some days are meetings or the problems I am up against are not challenging. So I guess I only do it for challenges or things I want to remember. Anyways, highly recommend this, it is my rubber duck debugging method of choice!
delsarto 9y ago
Of course there's a million things to do this; I wanted something very opinionated that simply turned a flat RST file that I keep every day (for consumption by me) into some lightly styled HTML (for consumption by others) so wrote rstdiary. I also keep a rough TODO list in there (it's either todo, or it's done and goes into a daily entry). https://github.com/ianw/rstdiary https://github.com/ianw/rstdiary https://rawgit.com/ianw/rstdiary/master/sample/index.html https://rawgit.com/ianw/rstdiary/master/sample/index.html Been working for me for about 4 years. Once you get a bit of a corpus, it feels silly not filling in some points for the day to keep the thing rolling.
msaharia 9y ago
How can I set the "default_hour" to present time in jrnl.sh when I don't mention tomorrow, yesterday etc.? Looks cumbersome to write the present time everytime.
lemonberry 9y ago
The comments and original post are great. I keep a directory called Core that has project notes, code snippets and a journal. I recently started using VS Code and a few extensions have really pulled my "system" together.
purplezooey 9y ago
No Android support. Wish there was.
martinthenext 9y ago
I've been developing something similar, but as a Telegram bot: https://telegram.me/daytobasebot https://telegram.me/daytobasebot https://github.com/martinthenext/daytobase https://github.com/martinthenext/daytobase I found it easier to use telegram because it is available on mobile as well as desktop, so I end up writing more things down. Pretty great to discover jrnl.sh, validates my idea that this approach to logging things can have wider adoption.
sh87 9y ago
I’ve been using Noguchi system fairly regularly, for general purpose notes and I imagine it could be very effective in developer journals too. I like the way Its described here, though I use plain text instead of MMD : http://www.literatureandlatte.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=15926#p15926 http://www.literatureandlatte.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1592... And this is the key > What I have found liberating is the concept of only have four tags
scadge 9y ago
Is it capable to do basic formatting, like making lists, quotes etc? I see there's a possibility to export into Markdown, but does it parse those formatting elements or should I write them in MD already?

186 points by carlchenet 9y ago

This is a great practice and I encourage all devs to try it. I just learned of the jrnl tool but I use a very similar command line / text / file approach. I have a few shell scripts for starting a new entry which I keep in a new file within the directory. I also commit it all to a git repo.

DelightOne 9y ago
Are you happy with it? What are your pain points?

jjude 9y ago

Similar to what is described, I keep a note of all errors I get while developing. I started this practice after realizing how often I search for the same error. Keeping a log of the errors and how I solved it saves me so much of time. I blogged about it here: https://jjude.com/flask-errors/ https://jjude.com/flask-errors/ Taking notes also makes me to conduct a thoughtful retro of what I have done.

rickcarlino 9y ago

Thanks for posting my article! I hope it is of use to the HN community.

carlchenet 9y ago
you're welcome :)
FRex 9y ago
The parts about no complicated file formats, ease of backup, keyboard only, fast, easy to use, text only, etc. strike close to home for me because this is what I also desired, to the point that I've written my own program to keep various notes. It also had to be portable (Windows and Linux) because at the time I had another weaker laptop that had to run Fedora and I wanted to use it there too. I just couldn't find such a program, everything was bad, not portable or 'rich' (aka images, styles, etc. aka needs mouse or has a complex file format).

memorythought 9y ago

Does anyone know of a tool like jrnl.sh that integrates with GPG for encryption?

Cthulhu_ 9y ago
Would it be hard to wrap it in a script that does that for you? I'm not familiar with GPG but I can imagine a smart hacker made it so that you could basically pipe it through.
- memorythought 9y ago
  True, not particularly difficult. At the moment though I just keep GPG encrypted text files if I handle encryption independently of jrnl then I lose a lot of the value of it like being able to search by tag. There was some discussion of including it here https://github.com/maebert/jrnl/issues/262 https://github.com/maebert/jrnl/issues/262 but it looks like they might have decided against it.
zeveb 9y ago
You can use org-mode and EasyPG Assistant: 1. Create a file foo.org.gpg 2. Put this in the first line (you can list multiple PGP keys if you like): -*- mode: org; epa-file-encrypt-to: ("PGP KEY ID HERE") -*- 3. Profit!
atmosx 9y ago
Check the vim journal plugin https://github.com/jmcantrell/vim-journal https://github.com/jmcantrell/vim-journal

purplecones 9y ago

I love this! I use the Terminal and VIM every day and really enjoy tools that fit within that workflow. I didn't even know about this project when I started building a similar tool (with the same name!).

corobo 9y ago
I have a relative path set up for my jrnl: "this": "./notes.txt" which I've aliased: note=jrnl this if I'm doing something that I get pulled away from it's a quick "note was working on the flux capacitor in somefile" .gitignore the notes file as desired
- gknoy 9y ago
  Can you share more about how you set up relative paths? Is that a bash alias?
  - corobo 9y ago
    Sorry I completely missed that bit! The relative path part is set up in your jrnl config usually ~/.jrnl_config
bphogan 9y ago
You might want to look at vimwiki if you haven't already. https://github.com/vimwiki/vimwiki https://github.com/vimwiki/vimwiki

Cthulhu_ 9y ago

I noticed a colleague wrote down a basic work log every day, just a high level approach to what he did during the day. I'm interested to try it myself, have done so for a couple of days. I've used Day One, a (iirc paid) mac app, very simple to use for quick blurbs. It also has a CLI, bit awkward to use maybe (`dayone2 new "text here`).

j_s 9y ago
Two weeks ago: Keeping a Lab Notebook | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15704354 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15704354 Yesterday: Joplin – A note-taking and to-do app with builds for desktop, mobile, terminal | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15815040 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15815040 Both have recommendations for the process and tools.

LeicaLatte 9y ago

Very nice!

ppeetteerr 9y ago

The tool is perhaps less important than the practice. I keep a journal with entries for every time I am blocked by an issue I cannot solve in my head. The process of writing it down, doing a pro/con list, working out the solution in writing, etc, helps unblock it. It's not so much about posterity as it is about unblocking issues and moving forward in the most sensible way.

pmatos 9y ago

I wonder what's the difference between using this or org-mode...

corobo 9y ago
One is the one you know and enjoy using, the other is not your preferred method. The world was beyond the emacs era and into the GUI editor when I started developing so it's a hump I've not been willing to climb, jrnl works well for me
- zeveb 9y ago
  > The world was beyond the emacs era and into the GUI editor Emacs is a GUI editor (e.g. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5a/Emacs-screenshot.png https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5a/Emacs-sc...), and the world still hasn't progressed beyond it. I'd love to be using something better than emacs, because it really is old & crufty, but literally no other environment is as powerful, as extensible and as pleasant to use.
  - eddieroger 9y ago
    > pleasant to use. That is a matter of opinion, which is what the OP before you was trying to point out. I know emacs, and use it as well when I'm in a shell environment, but I prefer to use Atom in a desktop environment where I may be copying and pasting from other apps. Pleasant is an opinion, which negates right and wrong.
    - rpdillon 9y ago
      > where I may be copying and pasting from other apps Is Atom better with copying and pasting certain kinds of content than Emacs?
      - gknoy 9y ago
        It depends on your Atom config and your Emacs config, I imagine. When I paste things into Atom or Jetbrains' Webstorm, my javascript usually gets auto-indented to The Right Place. Atom even did that when I _reordered_ lines, which was especially neat as I hadn't had Webstorm do it. This isn't something that my Emacs will do. I'd be _very_ surprised if there weren't some module, script, or Emacs configuration that I could use (or write) to get this same behavior. After all, Emacs' "Tab to The Right Indentation" was something that blew my mind years ago. (Disclaimer: I have used Atom, but prefer Webstorm. I use Emacs, but only for Git things and the occasional quick edit.)

lars512 9y ago

I began using a Github wiki this way. I like writing in markdown, and scaffolded some basic navigation between days, weeks, projects and meeting minutes. It’s been super helpful. I upgraded from billet journaling after finding that a paper journal was not a good enough reference later.

sunsetMurk 9y ago
care to share more about this setup? this sounds easy and like something I may actually get myself to "commit" to doing regularly. heh
- j_s 9y ago
  This would definitely help keep the contributions graph green!

otterpro 9y ago

I keep a journal using text files and Vim, but it is a combination of notes and journal. Instead of chronological order, I use text files based on the subject/topic. For example, I have a text file (journal) just for "Javascript" and another for "React". In fact, I even have notes on "journaling system", so I'm updating it as of now, writing an entry about "jrnl.sh". ON each text file, I'd write down what I learned, as well as snippets and URL of websites I have encountered. I don't use "tags" that often, because sometimes I'd forget the tags, or often it is hard to maintain them. I always have a Vim of notes/journals open, and I use ctrl-p and grep to add/read/search entries quickly. I think I might have about 400 (EDIT: over 1000) text files. Everything is saved to a git repo. Certain notes are published automatically as blog posts Hugo (by adding front matter, etc). I also keep a personal journal in a traditional chronological order, which is a single "journal2017.txt" file. I also recommend using private git repo, not public, since it may contain some of your personal information, and private thoughts. For the non-technical person (i.e. not into Vim or Emacs), I'd recommend Notational Velocity (nvAlt specifically) on Mac. I'd be using it, only if it had vim keybinding. It syncs online to SimpleNote, and it makes journaling really easy.

Diederich 9y ago
Yes. I have been doing a simplified variant of this for over 20 years now. (The git integration is newer than that :) It's easy, functional enough and works quite well.
jeiriei28828 9y ago
I was doing this in vim and syncing to Dropbox When my employer switched to Macs, I started using ia Writer and iCloud I like that I can write on phone or laptop. And all my old thought files are right there I still carry a notepad and mechanical pencil too. Sometimes the muscle memory and itch to “just write” demands it

geraldbauer 9y ago

FYI: A while a ago I published a plain text (standard) format for journals called journal.txt. See https://journaltxt.github.io https://journaltxt.github.io Happy writing in your journals.

JustSomeNobody 9y ago

I got started keeping a dev journal by logging bugs I fixed. I would document the problem, recreate steps (if QA supplied none), what I thought was the problem, what was the actual problem and finally how I fixed it. I also kept a note of where in the source the bug was found. Sure, there are automated was to do this, but we didn't use those at the time and, well, it led to a good habit, so I'm happy. Sadly, as much as I hoped it would, it hasn't translated into a good habit of writing a personal journal.

taternuts 9y ago

jrnl is cool! I had a good time half-cloning it in node for practice/fun a while back https://github.com/Robert-Wett/journal https://github.com/Robert-Wett/journal

miobrien 9y ago

This looks pretty cool. Installing it now. More generally, I've been using Quiver for about a year. Highly recommended. http://happenapps.com/ http://happenapps.com/

atmosx 9y ago

I keep an “engineering logbook”. I surely helps me put things into perspective, I can’t say that it made me more “productive”, but it sure raises awareness on issues and this is enough. I prefer pen and paper by far, so I ordered a personalised notebook, it is pretty good looking, most wouldn't touch it, but I'm planning on doing a collection of them. By personalised I mean that it has my name on it and reads "Engineering Logbook #1". I ordered this book from Stamford Notebooks[1]. No affiliation, but they're I'm planning to ask some customisations when I order "#2". [1] https://www.stamfordnotebooks.co.uk/ https://www.stamfordnotebooks.co.uk/

vanzorn 9y ago
Ran out of ink, did we? Leucchterm 1917 notebooks are awesome for logging / bullet notebooks - especially the dot grid ones. On the digital side, I was inspired to start using Org mode by following Sacha Chua's map approach: http://sachachua.com/blog/2014/01/tips-learning-org-mode-emacs/ http://sachachua.com/blog/2014/01/tips-learning-org-mode-ema...
- atmosx 9y ago
  I used quite a few digital Journals. I still keep a personal, private one, encrypted with GPG using vim and some basic automation via shell. I rarely write there. I like writing and have a lot to write about but I prefer physical journals by far... My handwriting is ugly too but I won't give up!
  - 50CNT 9y ago
    Have you tried the palmer method[0] in regards to handwriting? [0]http://palmermethod.com/ http://palmermethod.com/
    - atmosx 9y ago
      Nope. Thanks for sharing, I'll definitely look at it, as I'm looking for ways to improve both my handwriting and note-taking.

sridca 9y ago

I find that mind maps capture context and information better than linear logs. Any one else use mind maps on a daily basis?

aryehof 9y ago
In my case I just want to just capture information. Not think of context/categorization/connections. Global search then makes anything from the past instantly accessible, and I don't need to remember "how or where" I saved it.

tc7 9y ago

Very cool. I've been keeping a plaintext worklog at the day job to help with time-tracking. Logging time in our system as I go is slow and painful, so I just write it down daily and enter it all at end of week (month :|). I have a file for each month (e.g. `2017-12-timelog`), it stays open all day, and I just prepend entries like: Dec 1 Fri 9 - 10: emails/updates - 11:30: BB-X10 make the list update async - 3:30: hacker news - 5: BB-X10 unit tests I'm going to try jrnl for this use case -- feels like it'll be even simpler.

WA 9y ago

I track what I worked on in a text file, and more importantly, what decisions related to my business I made on this day. If something comes up that requires a bit of thought, I simply “discuss” it in free text form. It works mostly as a brain dump. I rarely read older entries. But it’s good to know that I could look things up later.

submeta 9y ago

This looks great. - Is there a way to prevent traces / entries in bash history?

deivid 9y ago
Put a space before running the command.
- karlding 9y ago
  For bash users, that assumes that the HISTCONTROL [0] environment variable is set to ignorespace (or ignoreboth). [0] https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/html_node/Bash-Variables.html https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/html_node/Bash-Vari...

jcrawfordor 9y ago

I work in devops support for an under-development software project. At request of the developers, I started keeping up a page in our wiki where, whenever something broke that affected the developers, I just logged what happened, why, and what I'm doing to prevent it happening again. The developers really like this so they feel more in the loop about system issues, but it turns out that I really like it because it's just really useful to have that log. I don't want to keep the wiki page super busy, so I now keep a text file with basically a much more verbose version of the same thing. What happened, what I tried, what I eventually found was the root cause, how I fixed it, and what I'm changing to prevent a repeat. This has two big advantages. First, the obvious one is that when things act up I can sometimes find details on a previous incident that I don't remember very well. The second and I think even greater advantage, though, is that it forces me to actually think seriously about the root cause and preventative measures every single time, instead of just fixing the immediate problem and then going on to the next thing in a rush.

yjftsjthsd-h 9y ago
Mine is a text for called "problems" that lists things that I've has to fix, each with a symptom list (including error codes and log output so it's easy to search), root cause where known, steps to fix, and date+time of every known occurrence. Partially helpful because some errors reoccurr.
karlding 9y ago
That's basically what postmortems are! For those unfamiliar with the term, postmortems are a written account of an incident, its impact, the actions taken to resolve resolve it, root causes, and identifying any follow-up actions to prevent the incident from recurring. I think postmortems should be a valuable learning opportunity for the entire company, and are by no means a punishment. In an organization that fosters "blameless culture," this allows the organization to grow and to identify and fix a weakness. Google's SRE book [0] also talks a bit about this in the chapter about Postmortems. [0] https://landing.google.com/sre/book https://landing.google.com/sre/book

LVB 9y ago

I wanted to journal more but struggled to remember to do so. A simple hack for me was to take a page from Pomodoro an install a countdown timer (I happen to use https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/activity-timer/id808647808?mt=12 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/activity-timer/id808647808?m...). Every 30 minutes I'm reminded to capture what I've been doing recently. Slowly I've been getting better at updating ahead of the reminder.

zbentley 9y ago

Utterly tangential, pedantic, and pointless pet peeve: people giving projects a "file extension-ish" name (e.g. jrnl.sh) that does not correspond to the language in which the program was written. It's a Python script, not a shell script. And yes, I know that the ".sh" probably refers to the fact that you use it from the shell, not the implementing language. I said it was pedantic, didn't I?

zeckalpha 9y ago
It's not the name, it's a domain name: http://jrnl.sh http://jrnl.sh
- nichochar 9y ago
  Isn't the domain name the name though?
  - papa-whisky 9y ago
    The name is clearly just `jrnl`: https://github.com/maebert/jrnl https://github.com/maebert/jrnl
spraak 9y ago
I read it more like a word, like "journalish" similar to bit.ly etc.

ElijahLynn 9y ago

I do this too! Not everyday, because some days are meetings or the problems I am up against are not challenging. So I guess I only do it for challenges or things I want to remember. Anyways, highly recommend this, it is my rubber duck debugging method of choice!

delsarto 9y ago

Of course there's a million things to do this; I wanted something very opinionated that simply turned a flat RST file that I keep every day (for consumption by me) into some lightly styled HTML (for consumption by others) so wrote rstdiary. I also keep a rough TODO list in there (it's either todo, or it's done and goes into a daily entry). https://github.com/ianw/rstdiary https://github.com/ianw/rstdiary https://rawgit.com/ianw/rstdiary/master/sample/index.html https://rawgit.com/ianw/rstdiary/master/sample/index.html Been working for me for about 4 years. Once you get a bit of a corpus, it feels silly not filling in some points for the day to keep the thing rolling.

msaharia 9y ago

How can I set the "default_hour" to present time in jrnl.sh when I don't mention tomorrow, yesterday etc.? Looks cumbersome to write the present time everytime.

lemonberry 9y ago

The comments and original post are great. I keep a directory called Core that has project notes, code snippets and a journal. I recently started using VS Code and a few extensions have really pulled my "system" together.

purplezooey 9y ago

No Android support. Wish there was.

martinthenext 9y ago

I've been developing something similar, but as a Telegram bot: https://telegram.me/daytobasebot https://telegram.me/daytobasebot https://github.com/martinthenext/daytobase https://github.com/martinthenext/daytobase I found it easier to use telegram because it is available on mobile as well as desktop, so I end up writing more things down. Pretty great to discover jrnl.sh, validates my idea that this approach to logging things can have wider adoption.

sh87 9y ago

I’ve been using Noguchi system fairly regularly, for general purpose notes and I imagine it could be very effective in developer journals too. I like the way Its described here, though I use plain text instead of MMD : http://www.literatureandlatte.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=15926#p15926 http://www.literatureandlatte.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1592... And this is the key > What I have found liberating is the concept of only have four tags

scadge 9y ago

Is it capable to do basic formatting, like making lists, quotes etc? I see there's a possibility to export into Markdown, but does it parse those formatting elements or should I write them in MD already?