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Comment by UmGuys | Hacker News Reader

The best programming advice I was ever given was given to me before I started while I was in college. It took me too long to appreciate how strong it made me. KEEP AN ENGINEERING JOURNAL. Keep it somewhere you have access to outside company property and update it daily with what you worked on learned. Bonus: take notes in every meeting. Also: how to make bad co-workers hate you.

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Could you expand on it? What are the benefits, what have you gained by doing this?

If you keep a journal of what you work on and learn each day it reinforces the concepts so you remember better. And you can use it for reference in the future. This is extra important for juniors starting out when everything is new. Taking good notes will accelerate your growth. It helps develop an understanding of the context you're working in faster.

Here's an example: the first time you learn a design pattern you can create a journal entry about that pattern with some psuedocode. Then next time you want to build something using that pattern, you can look at your journal. Even 10 years down the line and 3 companies later.

Does that help?

Thanks. I was wondering if the benefit was on just writing by itself, randomly rereading it with no purpose, searching for something specific, etc.

I've tried journaling before but I would rarely read it for anything. This is something I want try again.

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