Ask HN: How do you keep track of dev tools shared on HN? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you keep track of dev tools shared on HN?

3 pointsOlshansky3 comments

*tl;dr* I see amazing tools, platforms and services on Hacker News every day, but I struggle to find what I need when the time comes.

*Example:* I need to migrate a few cron jobs I have running on free dynos on heroku since the free tier is shutting down. In practice, all I need is a tiny server that periodically triggers a python script.

*Context:* There are so many alternatives popping up on HN ever day, but because I don't use them, it falls through the cracks. I've tried using bookmarks (in chrome), taking notes (in notion), search indexers (hn.algolia.com), but haven't been consistent with any one. I can always Google for things, but I struggle to find some amazing tools/platforms/services that I recall seeing on the front page.

*Current solution:* I'm currently looking into using into n8n.io to schedule the jobs and fly.io to host it, but it is per the recommendation of a friend.

*Question:* I was wondering if anyone else has come across this issue and whether you've found a solution that works for you?

Here are some tips (for not just dev tools) :

- Give a score (of interest) to your link/tool.

- Work on a good consistent hierarchy + tag-system for your DB

- Ask yourself first : Is this a popular link that I can later find easily by just googling the keyword ? if the answer is yes, don't save it. (I also sometimes append the keyword itself to my notes)

This way I mostly stopped worrying about the size of my bookmarks DB. I just add stuff. I know that I can later open the right place and sort that list by importance.

It is not perfect, and it always needs some maintenance (which I approach as a fun exploration)

Why not use what you have?

Energy spent finding and learning a new tool is often at least as great as what brute force will take.

Shopping can be an easier first step than starting the work, but is seldom more productive than starting the work as a first step.

I mean in the two hours since you asked the question, you probably could have implemented a substantial fraction (if not all) of the code required to run your cron jobs on EC2…work setting up EC2 factors out as part of the necessary transition.

Which brings up the idea that paying for Heroku is also a good option…i.e. using financial tooling.

Yeah I've just got a mess of bookmarks in various different services, including several different lists of bookmark/note organization services.

Tools like Obsidian[1] and Roam[2] seem to be all the rage these days (in a very small circle of nerds, I mean).

[1] https://obsidian.md/

[2] https://roamresearch.com/

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