5 ms·

Ask HN: How do you organize your personal notes on the company codebase?

21 points by rex-mundi 6y ago

How do you organize your knowledge base / notes on your companies codebase so that you know where a note should go and can easily find those notes later? Asking for a friend ;)

rodneyzeng 6y ago
my company supports microsoft office 365 enterprise version i guess. we have onenotes and onedrive. I use chrome bookmarks. And i have personal office 365 account, so if someday i need, will migrate to my own onenote and onedrive.
zaptheimpaler 6y ago
80 bookmarks, notes. txt files scattered in hidden places, a pile of senseless commands in one Google doc, incoherent rambles and drawings in a notebook that I never look at, a browser window and editor with unsaved tabs that can never be closed, bits of paper with powershell commands embedded in my shoes. as a backup, I keep a printed copy of the ext man pages and X11 docs with me at all times.
- iordachej 6y ago
  So I am not alone
Kagerjay 6y ago
I make a github repo with personal notes, like how tos, common commands, etc. Google chrome bookmarks for commonly accessed web urls
aynyc 6y ago
Confluence wiki since it’s work, might as well share it to others. Obviously, don’t share your private thoughts.
valuearb 6y ago
I’m a contractor so I use Apple notes, a new note for each build. My client has a project management system but they are a small team and not interested in keep it up to date. On my personal projects I use clubhouse.io, it’s really low friction project management system to setup and use. I write detailed notes in each task on what is broken or needs to change and why, and when I go weeks without being able to touch the code it gives me a great snapshot of its state to get me back up to speed. Plus when I add a contributor it should help them get started far easier.
karmakaze 6y ago
Hmm. I use unnamed, unsaved tabs in Sublime Text. It's great because the unsaved documents survive the app being quit and reopened or the machine rebooted. I do end up with many tens of tabs that I have to cull every few months. Most notes are temporary until I can absorb enough to have a good shot at finding out what it states with 15-30 minutes investigation tops. Having lots of saved notes wouldn't help me if I couldn't find what I'm thinking of quickly.
vi1rus 6y ago
I have a personal repository group. Three repositories within it. One named 'knowledge' where I store code snippets, common issues with their solutions I have dealt with. It has multiple markdown files, one per scope. I have a git.md, docker.md, and language based ones. issues.md I keep all the error X has solution Y. If I have to deal with an error I look there, if nothing is found i append the solution. If I realize I had the solution but I was using the wrong search term, I will add my search term in the original solution. My other repo is a scratch pad of sorts. Various scripts and tests, at various stages. This is for things like testing sorts, weird complicated manipulations to strings etc. I some need to run some script somewhere else to check somet so I can just clone scratch repo somewhere remotely and run things there. Mostly though it's more of a let me take all my objects from debug mode and use those values with a code snippet I want to alter without having to run large files to reproduce those object values. Third repo is my story repo. It holds all the stories I work on, with my notes. We use Jira so it's story is - a short description. Inside I write my thoughts, things I need to consider, things I don't want to forget. Lately I have been experimenting with having a day.md and I just keep appending on the top new days, I don't k ow if I like it more. All three repos are public within the company. I actually have used the story repo for presentations within my team etc. I find that it helps me keep me accountable. The fourth repo is not pushed anywhere. Just local for my personal todos, but I rarely use it. Instead I write my personal stuff on paper. It helps separate personal from work todos just by using a different medium.

21 points by rex-mundi 6y ago

How do you organize your knowledge base / notes on your companies codebase so that you know where a note should go and can easily find those notes later? Asking for a friend ;)

rodneyzeng 6y ago

my company supports microsoft office 365 enterprise version i guess. we have onenotes and onedrive. I use chrome bookmarks. And i have personal office 365 account, so if someday i need, will migrate to my own onenote and onedrive.

zaptheimpaler 6y ago

80 bookmarks, notes. txt files scattered in hidden places, a pile of senseless commands in one Google doc, incoherent rambles and drawings in a notebook that I never look at, a browser window and editor with unsaved tabs that can never be closed, bits of paper with powershell commands embedded in my shoes. as a backup, I keep a printed copy of the ext man pages and X11 docs with me at all times.

iordachej 6y ago
So I am not alone

Kagerjay 6y ago

I make a github repo with personal notes, like how tos, common commands, etc. Google chrome bookmarks for commonly accessed web urls

aynyc 6y ago

Confluence wiki since it’s work, might as well share it to others. Obviously, don’t share your private thoughts.

valuearb 6y ago

I’m a contractor so I use Apple notes, a new note for each build. My client has a project management system but they are a small team and not interested in keep it up to date. On my personal projects I use clubhouse.io, it’s really low friction project management system to setup and use. I write detailed notes in each task on what is broken or needs to change and why, and when I go weeks without being able to touch the code it gives me a great snapshot of its state to get me back up to speed. Plus when I add a contributor it should help them get started far easier.

karmakaze 6y ago

Hmm. I use unnamed, unsaved tabs in Sublime Text. It's great because the unsaved documents survive the app being quit and reopened or the machine rebooted. I do end up with many tens of tabs that I have to cull every few months. Most notes are temporary until I can absorb enough to have a good shot at finding out what it states with 15-30 minutes investigation tops. Having lots of saved notes wouldn't help me if I couldn't find what I'm thinking of quickly.

vi1rus 6y ago

I have a personal repository group. Three repositories within it. One named 'knowledge' where I store code snippets, common issues with their solutions I have dealt with. It has multiple markdown files, one per scope. I have a git.md, docker.md, and language based ones. issues.md I keep all the error X has solution Y. If I have to deal with an error I look there, if nothing is found i append the solution. If I realize I had the solution but I was using the wrong search term, I will add my search term in the original solution. My other repo is a scratch pad of sorts. Various scripts and tests, at various stages. This is for things like testing sorts, weird complicated manipulations to strings etc. I some need to run some script somewhere else to check somet so I can just clone scratch repo somewhere remotely and run things there. Mostly though it's more of a let me take all my objects from debug mode and use those values with a code snippet I want to alter without having to run large files to reproduce those object values. Third repo is my story repo. It holds all the stories I work on, with my notes. We use Jira so it's story is - a short description. Inside I write my thoughts, things I need to consider, things I don't want to forget. Lately I have been experimenting with having a day.md and I just keep appending on the top new days, I don't k ow if I like it more. All three repos are public within the company. I actually have used the story repo for presentations within my team etc. I find that it helps me keep me accountable. The fourth repo is not pushed anywhere. Just local for my personal todos, but I rarely use it. Instead I write my personal stuff on paper. It helps separate personal from work todos just by using a different medium.