How do you take notes?

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Curious developer with lots of backend and devops experience. Kotlin is my favorite programming language.

Location

Cleveland, Ohio
Education

Purdue University
Work

Senior Staff Software Engineer at Matterport
Joined

Feb 22, 2017

I use Boostnote synced with Google Drive for most code related notes or markdown documents.

Recently I got my first fountain pen (a Pilot Metropolitan) so I've been doing a lot more paper notes in a Moleskine notebook. I will probably upgrade to a better notebook when this one's done, such as a Rhodia, Clairefontaine or Leuchtturm.

The big sell for fountain pens is that it makes writing a lot more fun!

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Salvador Hernandez

Sometimes I code for fun, sometimes I don't, and that's OK :) 🦅 🐍 🌵

Joined

May 8, 2018

• May 8 '18

I currently use a fountain pen with a Leuchtturm notebook. The best part is that the notebook has an table of contents!

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Nancy Deschenes

Location

Near Montreal, Qc, Canada
Education

B.Sc. (Computer Science) McGill University.
Joined

Sep 25, 2017

• May 10 '18

Me too, me too!

I also find that the fountain pen makes my handwriting look better. The nib must not be too narrow, tho.

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Niko Heikkilä

Software craftsman with a strong passion for open source software and continuous improvement.

Email

yo@nikoheikkila.fi
Location

Tampere, Finland
Education

Software Engineer / Self-Taught
Work

Software Engineer at Futurice
Joined

Sep 7, 2017

• May 11 '18

I usually write stuff with my editor of choice (currently VS Code) in Markdown format. All the notes are saved in Dropbox. Later on, and if needed to distribute, I convert them to PDF/DOCX/HTML/whatever format with pandoc using custom templates. These converted versions are usually stored in some another service as well (eg. company cloud) for consuming and archiving.

I just can't get my mind into specialised note-taking apps when you can write in plain-text and convert to virtually any format to any service. Apps like Evernote have for ages been obsolete for me. However, I can understand there is a certain work involved writing your own conversion scripts and templates before you can take notes in plain-text.

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John Mitchell

Expert in Quality Dev and DevOps

Location

Los Angeles, CA, USA
Joined

May 10, 2017

• May 10 '18

I use pen and paper -- research has shown this helps the brain understand, correlate, and retain information. (Even if my err your notes are unreadable ;) ) I'm a fan of non-textual techniques like Mind Mapping (2D bullet points) and using fonts and arrows and boxes and things. Again, this helps with understanding. Read Sunni Brown's "Doodle Revolution" for tons of ideas!

For little stuff I use Google Keep. On my morning commute I listen to podcasts and often they have great ideas I want to research later. For that, Keep is perfect: always there, distributed, and simple and fun to use.

Enjoy!

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goyder

young nerd to chemical engineer to data scientist

Joined

Mar 27, 2018

• May 6 '18

I'm working through a large number of Coursera courses at the moment, and trying to compile good working notes from them. While I've played with Onenote, Evernote, and BoostNote, I struggled to get good integration between my notes and my code.

I'm finding the best solution is simply to use Jupyter Notebooks (inside a Docker environment) and push to Github. This way my notes and code examples are tightly integrated, and I can hop between my Linuxbox and Macbook with a minimum of fuss and drama.

The main challenge I have is that I'm not aware of any good tools for searching my notes in Jupyter notebooks. If anyone's aware of any tools, I'd love to hear it!

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Beeblebrox

Joined

Feb 23, 2017

• Sep 9 '18

Are your notes from Courses public or you store them in a private GitHub?

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goyder

young nerd to chemical engineer to data scientist

Joined

Mar 27, 2018

• Sep 9 '18

All public. You can find them here and here. :)

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Simon Hofmann

I'm a developer (no backend / frontend / fullstack foo, just a developer) working with JS, Java and various other interesting things. I'm currently working on https://github.com/nut-tree/nut.js

Location

Munich
Education

M.Sc. Computer Science
Work

Software developer
Joined

Sep 7, 2017

• May 6 '18

For really short notes I'm still using Google Keep, for larger notes like drafts of blog posts I'm using BoostNote.

It's file based and I'm syncing my notes folder via ownCloud, so I'm able to work on multiple machines.
There's also a mobile version, but I haven't used it yet.

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Joined

Feb 22, 2017

• May 7 '18

BoostNote looks cool. I am checking it out right now...

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Valentin Silvestre

French PHP developer. Get in touch with me ! https://www.linkedin.com/in/v-silvestre/

Email

vsilvestre.pro@gmail.com
Location

Lille - France
Education

Bachelor Degree
Pronouns

He/him
Work

Backend developer at Akawaka
Joined

Jul 7, 2017

• May 7 '18

Same with Google Keep. There's some feature missing but it work on all my devices and is accessible from everywhere easily.

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Beeblebrox

Joined

Feb 23, 2017

• Sep 9 '18 • Edited on Sep 9 • Edited

What would be advantage over free Evernote? Is just about markdown support (that Evernote is lacking) or something else?

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Seph Coster

Engineering Manager, software engineer.

Joined

Jul 13, 2017

• May 7 '18

Field Notes notebook and a Staedtler Triplus Fineliner, in my pocket at all times.

Remarkably, I find that the Field Notes slogan is true: "I'm not writing it down to remember it later. I'm writing it down to remember it now." I rarely consult my notes after I write them, and memory written as tactile sticks a lot more than typed notes.

Occasionally I'll use the stock "notes" app but that's really temp storage for the most part, then anything I do with those notes becomes the thing to which I refer back.

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Brunno dos Santos

Joined

Feb 15, 2018

• May 10 '18 • Edited on Oct 30 • Edited

Emacs with org-mode was a life changer for me! It's hard to start when you are not familiar with Emacs, but it's awesome when you get it! I already used Evernote, Notational and other apps, but no other app gives me the customization level that org-mode have.

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jovica

#infosec #sysadmin #vim

Joined

May 4, 2018

• May 8 '18

For short notes which I need only locally and for short time I use Vim.

For tech notes I want locally and remotely I use BoostNote.

For all other notes, bookmarks, projects, brain dumps, etc I use Dynalist, which is something like Workflowly, but much better.

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Mario DeLaPaz

Education

B.S Computer Science
Work

Software Developer at NJ State Parole Board
Joined

Jun 28, 2018

• Jul 12 '18

Dynalist looks interesting! going to check it out today!

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Aaron Barnett

I'm a post-bacc student with a previous BA in Biochemistry currently pursuing a 2nd bachelor's degree in Computer Science.

Location

Houston
Education

B.A.//Biochemistry//NYU
Joined

Nov 14, 2018

• Nov 18 '18 • Edited on Nov 18 • Edited

I use Microsoft OneNote and (until recently) a Huion drawing tablet. People definitely have their opinions about MS Office but OneNote has been a great way to keep everything organized, backed up, and paper free. I recently received an iPad Pro as a gift and have now been using the OneNote app with the Apple Pencil to keep up with notes for class. I always hand write my notes so this has been an awesome way to be even more organized and still be able to feel like I'm using a real pen (I just personally never learn or remember well when I type out my notes).

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Volker B. Duetsch

I'm currently compiling my project notes from more than 25 years of developer life, anonymizing them and making them available to everyone under https://github.com/vbd/Fieldnotes

Location

Nuremberg, Germany
Education

https://duetsch.info/skillset.html#weiterbildung
Work

Freelancer
Joined

Jul 17, 2017

• May 10 '18

Vim, notes in markdown format, Dropbox for syncing and mkdocs.org/ to publish it as local website with material theme squidfunk.github.io/mkdocs-material/

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