[Marcus316]

I should do this. Thanks for the idea! I've found that a lot of the time, when I'm on any sort of social media (including here on HN), I will open the reply box, type in a reply, read it, then discard it.

I certainly have the need to get it out of my system, but I usually don't feel like sharing (I'm quite self-conscious most of the time). A small text file is an idea I should have thought of myself, but now the seed is planted.

I almost didn't post this reply, either.

[soylentcola]

Fellow comment discarder here. You wouldn't guess by some of the long-winded replies I've made across various sites but that's a big part of it I think. I often write comments as if I'm having a conversation in my head so there's not a clear structure like you'd find in an essay or "proper" written piece. Then I start thinking of all the ways someone could miss the point and end up rambling.

See? Almost doing it now.

[scruple]

Yeah. I find that I usually don't submit my comments (despite writing them out and over-editing them, typically in a JOURNAL.TXT style file, as well) because I start thinking about how they'll be perceived or interpreted, how they'll be judged. Which is also essentially why I've been 'shy' my entire life around strangers. That and I genuinely feel like 90% of the time I'm not adding much substance to the topics (which is exacerbated on HN).

[scholia]

As Clive James once said, "No amount of careful writing can overcome careless reading" ;-)

[CaptSpify]

You might enjoy: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10859383

[WA]

I'm glad you posted :) I also use it as a devlog. If I want to remember some commands for example. Sometimes, I even plan entire days in my JOURNAL.TXT. For longer thoughts, I use a journaling app.

But the nice thing about a textfile is: You can search in it very easily, you can make backups, and there's never any regret for having written something in it.

[mercer]

I can strongly recommend Notation Velocity for these use cases (or rather, nvALT[1]). It's perfect for creating massive amounts of short snippets, stores them as plain text files, has a pretty novel full-text search and navigation interface (using basic vim bindings even!), and a whole bunch of other features that doesn't clutter things up (markdown, for one, as well as basic wiki-like linking between notes).

My current NV 'library' contains more than 1600 files, ranging from command snippets to journal entries to on-the-go wifi passwords to project meeting notes and lists and whatnot. On top of that I have two separate libraries that contain more sensitive data.

Oh, and using Dropbox or the like, you can sync the notes between computers, and with SimpleNote (as well as some other apps) you can access all of it on your mobile device.

[1]: http://brettterpstra.com/projects/nvalt/

[Terr_]

I'm more of the "edit it 30 times in the next 15 minutes" persuasion. Not because I post quickly, but because there's always something else I think I need to tweak.