Why Every Developer Should Keep a Daily Code Journal

veamly.co

3 points·azzen··4 comments

Good idea although realistically this won't be an easy habit to form.

I find that you can achieve essentially the same thing by just using git often. I commit as often as every 15 minutes. It takes literally 10 seconds. Why not?

Then the next day all I do is read the log and there is your journal.

I'll disagree. Like code comments vs code, actual descriptive text can cover much more than just commit messages.

I keep a daily work journal, and I write down:

- What I was working on

- Who I talked to, and about what

- Problems I ran into

- How I solved those problems

- Useful techniques and snippets I came up with

- Where I left off today, and where I need to pick up tomorrow

Personally I use a notebook for a checklist so it's in front of me at all times.

I keep any helpful notes in a format that I can search through. Just a folder with a bunch of txt files that I than use FZF to comb through.

And I use git as a journal to jog my memory about what I was working on and general project progression.

I was thinking the same thing. Commit after each discrete task, with a meaningful commit message. Then your log becomes your journal. Maintaining a separate journal is just double-entry bookkeeping, and if I wanted to do that I would have become an accountant.

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