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by semicolonandson 2069 days ago
As someone who is now over a decade into their programming career, today I find more value in doing analytical breakdowns of my various success and mistakes. What were my oversights on a project? How could I have communicated better? What made one particular library a success, etc.?

Therefore, after years of Anki, I've stopped adding new cards and doing repetition; instead I now focus on keeping a code diary. I've published the first couple of hundred entries here so you can see what this entails:

https://www.semicolonandsons.com/code_diary

I see the relationship between my days of ankifying tidbits of knowledge and my current diarying as one of tactics vs. strategy. The Anki-stage was necessary to drill the basics. But now, a decade later, the focus is on the bigger picture — and trying to capture this bigger picture onto a double-sided flashcard is about as fruitful as trying to contain an ocean in a bathtub.

3 comments

Wow, you've worked on lots of different things. And this seems like a good way to keep learning.
Great update. This seems to be very much in line with the note-taking and review techniques of Tiago Forte and Ali Abdaal, but for code.
I love the code diary idea. Can I ask you what tools (software, pen&paper) you use for your diary?
I just have a git repo and bunch of markdown files put into folders that correspond to tags. A few people have asked me about it so I already started recording a video about it for YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC17mJJnvzAa_e9qQqLIfIeQ