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

21 points by rex-mundi 5 years ago | 8 comments

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 ;)

zaptheimpaler 5 years 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 5 years ago | |

So I am not alone

vi1rus 5 years 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.

valuearb 5 years 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 5 years 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.

swaggyBoatswain 5 years ago |

I make a github repo with personal notes, like how tos, common commands, etc.

Google chrome bookmarks for commonly accessed web urls

aynyc 5 years ago |

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

rodneyzeng 5 years 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.