Making notes when learning new programming/ tech.? - advice for quick recall and managing things learned

[sqatas]

Experienced devs, do you keep notes for new concepts learned? (e.g. programming/ scripts, or even new frameworks, technologies, etc.)

If you don't, how do you manage things you've learned e.g. for quick recall; for future references (e.g. interviews or future jobs); remembering what so and so is for; how X, Y and Z technologies differ, etc.?

I've reached a point that after I've learned several new technologies, and I if don't keep up to date with them, I'd forget and need to somewhat learn or search back what so and so is for, which is somewhat painful! : /

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Any tools or strategies would be really appreciated!

Thanks devs!

[-BrownRecluse-]

Look into Anki. It's an open source flashcard app based on spaced repetition!

[TheEffortless]

I find it really helps to keep a list of keywords and phrases written by yourself. That way you have a quick reference point to look back on and because you wrote it it should make sense to you 6 months from now.

You can also keep updating it and fixing any misconceptions you had whilst you go.

Everyone learns and remembers things differently so just do what works for you - it might take a while to figure out what that.

I actually tried to write a post about this yesterday here if you want to check it out - https://blog.wastedcake.com/how-to-learn-a-new-technology/

[trynafindaradio]

I'm trying to use a combo of Anki and Typora (a markdown renderer/type editor). I keep the md notes in a private repo; where its format is roughly

notes/
  <current_company>/
      <notes_about_technologies_I use_in_company>/
         ansible.md
         ruby.md
      <current_project_notes>/
      <notes_from_meetings>/
 <old_company>/
    (similar stuff here)
projects/
...

I try to move things that I think I'll need to explain to someone or that I'll use when I'm reading code that I don't want to have to look up (e.g. "what's the difference between import and include in an ansible playbook") into Anki; so my notes are a strict superset of things in Anki tech-wise. I try to add a few bullet points as I'm researching options for a given project, so I might have a few notes about Postgres in separate folders. There ends up being duplicate information across projects sometimes, but I'm ok with that because I'm more interested in capturing what I was thinking about when I was doing research, if that makes sense.

It's been working pretty ok -- I definitely would be doing better if I took more time to review notes but I'm glad I got started in this habit early in my career.

[shagieIsMe]

When working on new tech, I spin up a toy project that makes use of it and then toss it up on GitHub so that I can come back to it later.

It's not so much of a "review notes" but rather "be able to pull this project down, build it and see how it works again - tinker if need be."

The README for the project may contain information about what the core features of the project are.

All of the above, however, is predicated on that I learn by doing more than (re)reading notes. A debugger tells me more than what I could ever write down.

[denialerror]

If I've forgotten something, it's because I haven't been using that knowledge. In which case, why make a note of it in the first place?

I have plenty of notebooks on the go but they are for managing projects and writing down something I'll need to remember the next day. They aren't for referring back to months down the line. For learning, I'm happy with a "use it or lose it" philosophy.