Ask HN: How do you document your knowhow, past projects and lessons? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you document your knowhow, past projects and lessons?

44 pointsselmat50 comments

Previously, I did use gmail drafts, but now I use private installation of doku-wiki for documentation of my design, schemes, know-how, created source code (git module), lesson learned.

Wondering what use HN community, if there is better way or tools for that.

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OneNote. The hierarchical breakdown of Notebook, Section, and Pages is quite useful. I use one page as a linear, chronological "Plan for today" journal, with links to subject matter on other Pages that naturally get organized into Sections (ML learning, Coursera - Scala, Health, Attitude / Thinking, etc;).

Evernote's Search is much better than OneNote's (Windows' Search), searching seamlessly even inside attachments, but I absolutely hate the look of Evernote pages; just a personal thing. Could be something as simple as Tahoma vs. Calibri, but I think it's more than that...OneNote really looks good to my subjective eye. Plus I like the keyboard shortcuts.

For PDFs, get really good at whatever Reader you use w.r.t. annotation tools. I love PDF-Xchange Viewer for annotation (a Windows product).

This topic comes up occasionally and we see lots of answers involving plain text and wikis. It seems like there is still room for some perfect solution to the OP's problem with just the right feature set. Something with the stellar web and mobile ease-of-use and performance of Trello but document-based and at the same time free-form.

OneNote is probably the closest thing that exists.

OneNote seems to be the only tool that's actually being used in my team. It's not perfect but it works.

Using OneNote too and another advantage is, for people like me, who have a Surface, that I can jot down prototypes and sketch diagrams there.

Other than that, I use Edge to write on pdf's. (Sometimes, if they're small, I just print them into OneNote and write there)

A thing many problably don't know: OneNote supports LaTex (with some differences) in the equation editor

The one thing I hate about OneNote is that the internal links are inexcusably weak in that if I change the name of a destination page all links to that page break. Seriously, wtf is with a boneheaded move like that? (Hopefully someone here can tell me they finally fixed that idiotic deal breaker, as OneNote is otherwise so close to perfect in my eyes)

Using markdown, in a SublimeText project, with MarkdownExtended, Markdown Preview, project search (using ripgrep), imagePaste (to paste from clipboard to a file in a ./.images directory along with the image markdown syntax), and a folder hierarchy that organises notes into general topics and filenames with project/contents descriptors.

I also write all my lectures this way and output to slides using backslide (remark.js).

I have two text files always open, `_inbox.md` (all unorganized incoming notes) and `_work.md` (tasks list and dates).

I've tried a bunch of different things and this is the only thing I seem to stick to. I sync it to multiple machines with BoxSync and keep it all in a git repo (for when I care about tracking changes, usually my commits are weekly, with useless commit messages).

For my own work:

A Leuchtterm1917 dotted notebook + mechanical pencil + ink/gel hybrid pen.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B003ENUIKC/ref=s9_acsd_hps...

For work I do under employment I tend to use org-mode and publish to whatever format suits them best. Often one of PDF, HTML, or Markdown.

I have been experimenting with using an org-mode based publishing system that syncs with my ReMarkable... it is taking over some of my note-taking. But I'm a chronic journal-keeper and have over a decade of notes and experience with my system.

How do you organize your paper notes?

I take a lot of "scratch" notes on paper, but often end up copying them into the computer at the end of the workweek. Usually they are quite a mess, and preserving them as-is makes for a challenge when using them in the future.

The other nice thing about notes on the computer is that they are easy to move around, tag, edit, etc. I can also integrate a tool like Zotero into my workflow, using pandoc-citeproc to keep a true bibliography and reference list.

I'm not saying you need all of those things, obviously. But I find them really helpful, and I would like to know how your system obviates the need for things like that. Do you write URLs by hand?

> How do you organize your paper notes?

Meticulously.

For each subject I keep notes on (projects, mathematics, reading, etc) I use a series of journals and different styles.

For my projects I use a system somewhat similar to bullet journal[0]. The Leuchtterm journals are a great fit (and I'm glad I discovered them) because the pages are numbered and come with an index. I use the pocket at the back for reference cards.

I like taking notes using my personal notation and being able to think in a quiet room without a glowing screen, notifications, or the temptation to check HN is valuable. It helps me get in the flow and solve the real problems. When I get back to my work at the computer it's usually pretty rote.

For mathematics I use a dotted-pad with a system I developed for myself. I use smaller, lined books for my reading and diary.

And they all stay in my office in my home indexed by shelf. And it looks quite handsome I think. I don't know whether it will be a boon or a burden to those I leave behind when I'm gone some day but I enjoy having a hard reference copy of my development and ideas.

[0] http://bulletjournal.com/

> A Leuchtterm1917 dotted notebook + mechanical pencil + ink/gel hybrid pen

How well does the pencil write on the Leuchtterm1917? I've definitely noticed that a lot of the notebooks people talk about—those by Rhodia, for instance—are great for using pens, but they don't have enough tooth for pencils to write well. I think I remember feeling the pages of the Leuchtterm in a bookstore and noticing the same smoothness, so I didn't pick one up. Was I mistaken?

Works well with HB or darker leads just fine. If you're that kind of person Leuchtturm even makes branded pencils to go with their books.

I did try a Rhodia pad for my mathematics once when my order with the store was delayed and it wasn't as pleasing. It worked fine but the lead does smear a little bit too easily for the reasons you mentioned.

Markdown to Evernote, but I'm also keen on embedding little screencasts in my notes. It's sometimes a great memory jog to have an old terminal session reanimated and popping up in response to your keyword search results.

It's also been useful for a 'show rather than tell' approach to technical Confluence documentation.

I've previously used LICEcap and Screenflow, but SnagIt also has some nice video capture options, with an option to convert to animated GIF. Also becoming a bit of a fan of Camtasia, but the output is regular video.

Used to use Quiver (http://happenapps.com/) but now switched to Bear Notes (http://www.bear-writer.com/).

Both support Markdown and Syntax Highlighting. Quiver is lot more full featured programmer's notebook but I like Bear because its light and I prefer tag system.

Another happy Bear user here. Markdown, syncing, and tags all work really well.

The downside is that it's Apple-only at the moment. It's not a problem for me right now since I'm deep in the Apple ecosystem, but I'm keeping my eyes open for alternatives that are as polished as Bear, but are cross-platform.

Worst-case scenario, Bear can dump out to markdown files on disk (images too) if I ever need to migrate to something else.

Really like Quiver (not affiliated at all), more than enough bells-n-whistles for me : - Everything is stored as JSON so I keep sync'ed over Dropbox and version-controller via Git. - Supports both a nesting hierarchy and tagging. - Though I don't use it much I like the JS flowchart and sequence-diagrams - etc etc

Love Quiver... I wish some encryption was included. I suppose a wrapper/script might be able to handle it.

I used google-drafts, wikis, all sorts of combos involving folders & files & hardcopies before discovering org-mode 4..5 years ago.

Since then I've been able to forge 20 years of references, scans, pdfs, application-code!, shell scripts, photos, glyphs, graphs, fonts into an exo-brain (a nice word from the cool kids) that not only includes journals, time & billing, ledgers, feeds, project and resource planning, play-books & checklists for my own debriefing

into something version controlled that boots from a chroot and can transfer to android devices. i can now find, use and profit from clusters of notes, generate html and latex, read, write and code, interface with and even capture just about anything that life has thrown at me since i started re-tooling myself.

I've got a reminder/drill mechanism which picks high-level topics things for me to review and i just go with that to remember and refine old stuff as i go. Its a seething mess of useful.

In essence .. i tag, sort, sift, condense and categorize like everyone else. In under a gig of ram, and, as it happens, at the speed of thought via a consistent user-interface.

And yeah, of course i use a browser. I can capture/convert html to plain text & drag images into files knowing that everything will always be hyperlinked by not-too-obnoxious uuids.

For some reason I had to hold my nose delving into emacs after ignoring it for 20 years. It seemed so weird. Now that I've gotten used to working with software that enables general purpose computing, I'm experiencing Ataraxia.

Anyhow, to the OP, check your net-present-value figures. Are you expecting to be a knowledge worker for a while? Have you ever chosen a slightly harder path to make things easier?

If so, just take this note as a hint for what's possible when you're seriously looking to answer your own question :)

I'm testing out tiddlywiki (https://tiddlywiki.com/) as of right now. I really like it so far. Used to use org-mode, then plain old google docs. Right now for me it's between onenote and tiddlywiki.

That project must be really old, because I remember being excited about it at the same time I was excited about Emacs.

The main developer has rewritten the whole thing in version 5 in NodeJS and HTML5, it's pretty slick now. I have it running in a docker container on GCE.

I use vim <http://www.vim.org/> and zim <http://zim-wiki.org> to maintain my collection of notes which are primarily text. Both tools work well on Linux and Windows.

Zim is great if you need some type of markup (ex:- hyper links, bullet points etc.,). Vim is great for plain text.

If the notes are private but need to be shared across multiple machines, I create a private gitlab project.

If the notes are public, I either create a github project or put them on a public wiki where only I can edit. For the public wiki, I am using an account on shoutwiki <http://www.shoutwiki.com> .

I've spend a long time trying different methods of doing this.

I briefly investigated tiddlywiki, used OneNote heavily for a while.

Currently I'm migrating to using JupyterLab notebooks on an ec2 instance with IP whitelisting.

It works pretty well, I have a kind of dream to connect it to a Datomic server instead of using filesystem notebooks and have relational notes.

does your note contain runnable sourcecode? why Jupyter?

What's the benefit of datomic vs. filesystem?

Yeah some runnable code, not much at the moment but hopefully more as time goes on.

Most of my notes are to do with data or programming, and a lot are just script fragments on how to do something, I want to run them.

In theory I could hack jupyter and datomic to enable me to define relatinoships and query for notes instead of having either a text search or a single hierarchy navigation

Azure offers free Jupyter notebooks if that’s of interest

I am interested in personal experiences/anecdata documenting what happens to these collections when the collector dies. So much effort invested!

I plan to make sure organizational time pays off in the short term, and need to work up a 'site map' for my various digital collections (in the off chance anyone cares after I'm gone). Sharing as much as possible starts to make sense in the long term, so classifying what "must be private" must be done as part of the process. (A tiny bit of this aspect is reflected in how useful my own StackOverflow contributions have been across jobs!)

In this light, tools encouraging sharing useful specific technical info semi-privately within a small group of very close professional friendships start to make a lot of sense.

i've seen free blogs used such as blogspot or wordpress, i might go that route.

Also GitHub gists have been of great help.

Using a Wordpress theme for it with all post formats supported (link, quote, aside, etc)

https://mothemes.baby

If you want to try (in test mode now) send me an email to the address from my profile

That is an interesting use of gmail drafts. I'm sure you stretched the usability to the limit and found pros and cons going to a wiki.

I use orgmode, starting with a buffer with a few headings, URLs, and paragraphs on a topic. The buffer may be killed the same day or turn into 100k words spread over a few files a few years later, still easily searchable with org-agenda or grep and automatically exported to HTML for viewing on mobile. I don't bother with images or mobile editing due to complications--those are the main drawbacks.

While building my company, we just drop all our experiences, lessons learned and failures down in our blog. It helps us document the process, be able to look back at it, as well as hopefully provide a valuable blueprint for other people building a business.

We've been doing it from day 1 and realise how valuable is and will be, going forward. https://weardulo.com/blogs/origins

I write things down and then transfer what is useful to digital with org-mode.

Depending on the "officialness," I write things down on either a legal pad or in a lab notebook dedicated to a project. Then the most important bits of this gets put into an org-mode "notebook."

I prefer writing things down first, I find that it sharpens my thinking around whatever I'm recording.

Though there are some other interesting ideas in here that I may try and steal.

Relevant from 73 days ago: "Ask HN: How does your team handle knowledge documentation?" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15637194

My answer is the same. The tools don't matter much at all when it comes to documenting knowledge. Whatever gets used is best. Searchable is a plus.

I use GitBook and GitHub.

I have a repository with many markdown files (https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/knowledge) and I render it all with GitBook here (https://wiki.nikitavoloboev.xyz).

Diaries in Workflowy, per project. Top-level "folders" for years, second level for months, third level for days.

At the moment it's a collection of Markdown files in a Git repo. I'm thinking about moving to a wiki solution but I haven't settled on one yet.

Has anyone used multiple wikis and can comment on the pros and cons? There are so many out there. The only one I know I don't like is Tiddlywiki.

Zim Wiki - Very simple, supports inline images, etc.

Gollum is a wiki UI for what you're already using (markdown in git)

https://github.com/gollum/gollum

nvALT is growing on me as of late. Very quick and easy way to build a library of markdown notes.

Boostnote (https://boostnote.io). Writing markdown in vim mode, annually rotated, version controlled with SparkleShare.

What's your opinion about online Markdown editors backuped by Github Pages? Something like http://prose.io/

Using Python Sphinx. Compiles markdown to html. Searchable, TOC, index. http://www.sphinx-doc.org/.

emacs org mode self hosted mediawiki

A Dropbox folder full of markdown files with some custom syntax for quick jotting down ideas and knowledge, worked great for the past couple of years.

I use CherryTree. I use it as simple editor application (not code editing though) and also use its' hierarchical structuring of the notes.

I use IntelliJ/WebStorm. I open a Google Drive folder which contains a markdown file for each day.

Github Gist, Bear Note taking app(hashtags, hierarchical ordering, etc) and sometimes jrnl cli tool

GitHub gist， google drive（why Gmail drafts?), mediawiki

Markdown. Synced to github and Gitlab.

a .plan file for my todo list, and some Markdown files synced on github.

Simplenote / github

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