How do you take notes while you code?

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Mar 23

I like to keep a small text document of TODO items for my current ticket. If something is particularly complex then I’ll keep my notes saved for future reference, but there’s typically enough details in the ticket or the code / comments that I don’t need my notes after the fact.

Curious to see what other people take notes on and how it helps their coding process.

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When there's a long command idiosyncratic to a codebase I actually throw it in my Slack messages to myself -- avoids multiplication of apps.
I should figure out how to alias these though-- any good resources?

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I use notion, I write some cheatsheet type things down and maybe some key interactions. I try to keep it at a bare minimum.

Mostly try to focus on actually trying to implement what I'm studying so it sticks more. At least thats whats worked for me.

I always take notes or write down my TODO-list when coding. I like to use Trello (trello.com) because of it's simplicity and nice features. If I'm working on a smaller project, I like to make little notes on post-its and stick them on the edges of my screen. That often results in a quite weird looking screen setup, but at least I got an overview of everything :)

I normally take notes on Obsidian: my to-dos, daily reflection, meetings notes, definitions and so on.

If I'm extremely and highly stressed out I start to brain-dump everything on paper. For me, it feels like I'm moving things from my brain to somewhere else and I can see it much clearly than with my computer.

I feel that for my brain, the computer is just an extension of itself, but paper? nope, it's a place to vomit feelings/thoughts/ideas/etc 😂 I think this is due to my teen years where I would draw a lot. Every idea, thought, feeling was set on paper and promptly forgotten hahaha

It depends on the nature of the note.
When the note is intended to be shared I will just write it in the code using an highlighter tool to make sure it's visible. This way the notes can be quickly shared with my peers.
When it's a note that require discussion: Notion
When it's a note for me, I will drop it in my Notion note section.

I’ll throw things in Mac notes app (if I don’t plan on doing anything with it) or Notion if I need more functionality and expect to read it in the future.

I either take notes in a physical notebook, or in my local kanban board (I use kanbanier for Mac, a simple app) where I track status.

When writing code, my notes are my code, tests, comments, commit messages, and issue tracker. If that's inadequate for "thinking", I'll step away and either grab pen and paper or start an org-roam node to begin thinking by writing.

My default fallback for any note taking is my personal knowledge management tool (org-roam).

Transient notes go into Slack, open strands in code go into TODO-tagged comments (thanks JetBrains for letting me find them easily!), and more persistent notes go into a root-level TODO/README, our wiki, or as a printout on the whiteboard.

Relevant personal notes just get dumped onto the desktop, with cleanup every year or so during business downtime.

For development sketches and so on, I just go pen&paper. Usually have a small A6 booklet with me for that purpose, and scribble down ideas and plans while sitting on the deck.

I use NotesHub.app. It stores your notes as Markdown on Github and you can create as many repos as you like. You can even attach it to a project repository and manage the notes in NotesHub.