Interesting. I've had FreeMind installed on one of my systems for probably a year and never really got around to using it. With regards to using it to improve

Interesting. I've had FreeMind installed on one of my systems for probably a year and never really got around to using it. With regards to using it to improve programming performance, I think you say near the end of the article that this will not make someone a star overnight. And I agree. In fact, I'll say that this will not make you a 10x programmer, period. Not without the algorithmic foundation and experience that a 10x programmer (whatever that is) has to have. I am not criticizing your article at all. I think you could be onto something here. I just want to point out that there's far more that goes into being a good programmer than being able to navigate documentation quickly. I think you allude to that in your article when you talk about the mind map exposing you to peripheral entries every time you use it. I suppose a map could be used to log and accumulate knowledge on other areas equally important to programming. Algorithms and patterns is what comes to mind. There was a recent HN discussion on data representation as an important element of writing good programs. I find this is a critical difference between a good (and experienced) programmer and a newbie or intermediate programmer. The experienced programmer is at a point where he/she almost intuitively understands which representations might offer an advantage. This sort of thing only comes with experience --writing a lot of code and learning from your mistakes. I'd be interested in your thoughts in how you might approach encoding such knowledge into a mind map. I watch a lot of documentaries and presentations. Sometimes I wish I could capture the important points in some fashion in order to develop a database of knowledge, if you will, for future reference. In the past I've tried doing a text file for each documentary. You could keep them all nicely sorted and search the files for keywords. It really hasn't worked that well. I wonder if mind maps is what I've been looking for? Finally, I wonder if mind maps is the best way to document and manage ideas? I can see that one might be able to find relationships and synergies by exploring a map. This is a case where I have consistently used text files to log ideas and related links, text, etc. I now have hundreds of these files. It's at the point where the directories that contain them are impossible to view and get a sense of what is there. This meaning that you can't see 300+ file names and easily understand and/or explore the concepts within them and relating them. Do you (or anyone reading this, of course) have any experience managing such information using mind maps?