Show HN: I've been writing daily TILs for a year

819 点作者 jbranchaud超过 9 年前

64 条评论

Just wanted to say, this is an excellent idea and I'll be blatantly stealing it for myself from this point forward; thank you for putting this motivation in my head by your successful implementation.I've done a half-assed "important learnings from the last year" retrospective for myself, but your method of keeping it going forward is both far less lossy and more complete.Putting it on GIT as well seems like a smart choice. Treat it as your "Accessible anywhere" personal cheat-sheet.

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ryanmarsh超过 9 年前

When I was first learning UNIX many years ago a grey-beard told me to always keep a spiral bound notebook and pen at my side. It was great advice. Jotting down the arcane commands committed most of them to memory, for the rest my black little spell book held the magical incantation for any situation. I've since gotten away from that habit. Perhaps I should follow this fellow's lead.

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tfgg超过 9 年前

This is great.As an extension, I was discussing with a friend a while ago how great Stackoverflow is at capturing the contents of expert's brains. Is there a way to achieve that on a broader scale without requiring the question-asking side of things? Say you're a lab scientist and you have a small trick or bit of informal insight, how could you be prompted in the right way to share it?

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jbranchaud超过 9 年前

For me, this is all about tracking my personal learning. I reference old posts several times a week. I hope others can learn from it as well!

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nodesocket超过 9 年前

My favoriate, check if port is in use:<a href="https://github.com/jbranchaud/til/blob/master/unix/check-if-a-port-is-in-use.md" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/jbranchaud/til/blob/master/unix/check-if-...</a>Would be cool, to be able to collaborate and comment on each article. Perhaps, make this entire thing GitHub gists or Wiki?

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ShaunFinglas超过 9 年前

Didn't know what a TIL was until just now.However I've been doing something very similar for over a year now. Its called a Developer Diary. I can't give credit for the talk that gave me this idea but it's without doubt one of the best changes I've made to further myself.It's the same idea, except the content is not public. I've toyed with the idea but the content is very rough plus includes some very specific details. That said I host the content so it's always in my browser as plain text files, so able to search and navigate easily. I've blogged about the idea before, but however you do it, make notes. Your future self will thank you.<a href="http://blog.shaunfinglas.co.uk/2014/09/developer-diaries.html" rel="nofollow">http://blog.shaunfinglas.co.uk/2014/09/developer-diaries.htm...</a>

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cableshaft超过 9 年前

I've been using <a href="http://www.devarist.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.devarist.com</a> (which was posted on HN back in August last year) to record little tidbits on an almost daily basis, and it's been working pretty well.If it's something I have to look up I try to make a habit of putting it in there. Then I can do a search for the search phrase I'd normally make and it pops right up, saves me a lot of time looking through the top couple of documents for the nth time.Devarist has Markdown support also. I've been using it to include little 20x20 icons for each programming language or technology so I can scan through the past pages to see at a glance which technology each note applies to.That having been said, doing it in Github might actually be better for the public tidbits. Some things you learn kind of need to be kept private though (like your own projects, or pertaining to your job, or pointing out things you have trouble remembering to do).

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stygiansonic超过 9 年前

Great job, and even better idea for putting it into a git repo!I've been keeping a sort of "development log" for the past few years where, each day, I write a small blurb about what I've done, but more importantly, what I've learned.It's a similar idea to this, but obviously a lot less structured. (The use of Markdown was a great idea, btw!) This helps you get an idea for how much you have done if you ever find yourself questioning what you've been doing for the past little while.

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kriro超过 9 年前

I wonder how efficient this would be for non technical stuff. I like to read quite a bit (commute by train) and usually marker and scribble in the books. It's typically business, pop-science, philosophy or history etc...might end up with a list like:- Visiblity, Feedback, Constraints, Mapping, Consistency, Affordance from Design of Everyday Things- Maven, Salesperson, Connector from Tipping Point- 7 years' war cliff notesI feel like it would get too big soon but it's a nice way of keeping track of the interesting things you have discovered.I'm also considering putting my entire "Ideas" board and possibly other boards from Trello on Github instead.Edit: Related question: Is there any way to keep a bibtex file in Github and use it for citations in markup? That would be wonderful.

olejorgenb超过 9 年前

I recently found out about `git log -G REGEX` (and -S)This will filter all commits (ie. lines changed by the commit) by the REGEX and report back the log for those.With -S, commits with equal number of matches in added and removed lines are ignored.

methodover超过 9 年前

Something I find really interesting is how VIM takes up a huge chunk of the TILs.One of my personal quirks is I feel like those terminal-based editors consume an undue amount of time and energy to learn and maintain. This TIL seems to give a bit of extra evidence for that suspicion. Simpler options have been available for years now (e.g., Sublime). In those rare moments when you do need to edit files on a remote server, nano is always available.

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melling超过 9 年前

I keep my org notes in a private repo, which I often edit directly on Github. I organize by topic. e.g. Cooking, Photoshop, Haskell, yoga, drawing, Go, Emacs, vim, etc. I use my two README.org to organize the information. One is for all topics and the second is a much smaller immediate README that I want to view daily. I keep it pruned since the main README has all the references.I'd like to breakout topics of general interest but I feel that I'd need to be more organized. Last week, however, I did move my Ergonomic Notes (e.g. RSI, keyboards, mice, programming by voice) to a public repo.<a href="https://github.com/melling/ErgonomicNotes" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/melling/ErgonomicNotes</a>I also find it helpful to group topics and create menus in the org files:Menu: Ergonomic Keyboards | Ergonomic Mice | Programming by Voice | RSI

jonalmeida超过 9 年前

This is cool. For one of my internships, every time I learned something I wrote it out with a 'TIL' prefixed and put it in our group chat.At the end of the internship, I grepped the logs for all those lines but never found anything useful worth re-visiting. :)

bittersweet超过 9 年前

I love this! I started doing this years ago as well via a simple notes dir in my dotfiles (example [1]), and actually wrote a small tool to help me with it [2]. This way I can list all the note files I have (cli, zsh, vim etc) and pretty print them a bit and have search if I can't remember the exact thing :)[1]: <a href="https://github.com/bittersweet/dotfiles/blob/master/notes/git.txt" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/bittersweet/dotfiles/blob/master/notes/gi...</a>[2]: <a href="https://github.com/bittersweet/notes" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/bittersweet/notes</a>

woodruffw超过 9 年前

Great idea!By the way, minor note on unix/copying-file-contents-to-system-paste-buffer.md:"pbcopy" is an OS X only utility, but X11 (Linux, BSD) has a rough analogue in the form of "xclip". Just in case you ever switch over ;)

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emp超过 9 年前

I've been using Notational Velocity for a while in this way. It's wonderful. Synced on Dropbox, my "little black book" is available on any device I have at hand, and instantly searchable.

bewe42超过 9 年前

I have been taking (plain text) notes for many years. My approach is to write down immediately everything I figure out. The biggest issue I have is to retrieve notes effectively. And to be faster creating them. I started experimenting with how to make the whole process better and have built <a href="http://codingbrain.com" rel="nofollow">http://codingbrain.com</a>. It's basically a better search, copy-n-paste, history tool that works on local markdown files.My other idea I'm currently working on is to provide a different kind of bookmarking service that gives you an option to write down what you have learned from that bookmark. I think one of the best way to get better is to always try to repeat from memory what I have learned. The service is supposed to compare my summary with the original content, maybe offer some Anki style repetition training etc

TimJRobinson超过 9 年前

I do this with my blog. Every time I discover something unexpected or google something and don't get a good answer I like to write a blog post with that search term as the title and the solution to the problem.Helps both commit the information to memory and help others in the future. Who said blogging had to be long form posts anyway?

Flimm超过 9 年前

When I learn something, I ask a question on Stack Overflow and I answer it myself, which is perfectly allowed and encouraged. The advantage with putting it on Stack Overflow is that I get corrections or better answers over time.

eecks超过 9 年前

I have done something previously in the past but never keep it up that long. I like your layout. Was it all manual? That is - did you have to do the index/readme manually?

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kamaal超过 9 年前

Brilliant. This idea can be extended beyond tech.Its common for a lot of musicians to keep practice log books. Trying to learn something new every day is an amazing idea, in area of work.

voltagex_超过 9 年前

I've had <a href="https://github.com/voltagex/junkcode/blob/master/Bash/commands.md" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/voltagex/junkcode/blob/master/Bash/comman...</a> for a while but this is much better.I have to resist the urge to automate the ToC, though.Edit: <a href="https://github.com/voltagex/til" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/voltagex/til</a>

xgordon超过 9 年前

Personally I have "knowlede base" document where are useful hints, commands and step-by-step guides how to do something (like: configure/code/export/filter etc.).Other text file contains useful links with other's step-by-step guide founded on internet.Github is interesting idea since it's available from my personal and working laptop. Till now i have used google docs/gmail draft messages.

tieubao超过 9 年前

TIL is the cool concept for all people and topics, not just for developers or engineering related stuffs.I apply the simple way to organize them via Github Issue -- <a href="https://github.com/tieubao/til/issues" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/tieubao/til/issues</a>It's good for us in term of effortless and easy for reference ...

StavrosK超过 9 年前

I just thought about doing this for learning hardware design a few hours ago. I started dabbling a while ago, and writing down the things I learnt would result in a concise document full of compressed knowledge. I'll probably use a different format (a continuously updated page on my site), but it's the same idea. Thanks for sharing!

schnika超过 9 年前

<a href="https://github.com/jbranchaud/til/blob/master/ruby/comparing-arrays-in-rspec.md#comparing-arrays-in-rspec" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/jbranchaud/til/blob/master/ruby/comparing...</a>I really like the .contain_exactly() matcher for this purpose as well :)

0xCMP超过 9 年前

Ah yea this is awesome. I like this idea more than how I do my notes[0] because I don't actually do most of my notes in github where this makes more sense to actually commit and know when to commit/push.[0]:<a href="https://github.com/cmpis/notes" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/cmpis/notes</a>

antoaravinth超过 9 年前

This is great idea. I always had other way to keep my learnings at a single place, for which I have used Anki tool. At times, down the line I open my Anki tool and see those flash cards on how much I really remember. This was very fun to me and also at the same time very good learning.Git looks to be an awesome idea. Thanks for your efforts.

donretag超过 9 年前

The Pragmatic Programmer book talked about creating a solutions log, which can be consulted at a later time.

dwaxe超过 9 年前

I was hoping you were a Reddit bot who's been farming /r/todayilearned for the last year.

oxplot超过 9 年前

I've been doing this for years but sparingly and in my blog (in fact my blog's heading reads "because I forget simple little things too soon"). Never occurred to me to git it as that makes it effortless to record just about everything. Thanks for the idea.

minhajuddin超过 9 年前

I extracted a static site out of this and put it up at <a href="http://til.zammu.in/" rel="nofollow">http://til.zammu.in/</a> . This kind of content is great for Static Sites as people can easily contribute to them using Github Pull Requests.

deadcast超过 9 年前

Wow cool idea! I've kind of already been doing something like this but posting little code snippets to my twitter account for later reference. I like the idea of creating a repo like the OP and not having to spam my followers with my random, crappy code! :~) Cheers!

reacharavindh超过 9 年前

I've been keeping my version of TILs on Quiver and Notes. You've inspired me to organize them together into Github and share. I'm thinking of making Gists for each categories instead of individual files though. Any reason why you created individual files?

raddad超过 9 年前

Great idea. As someone who suffers sometimers, as opposed to Alzheimer, I tend to forget. I'll know I knew that at some point, and this list would be just the ticket.I tell people my memory is excellent but my retrieval tends to suck bad sometimes. Random access memory?

cevaris超过 9 年前

would be nice to auto generate these TIL readmes based off personal stack overflow upvotes.

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elwell超过 9 年前

Smart to put it on GitHub. Works as a nice hack to appear super productive on public profile. My day-to-day commits are all private, so I look slow/lazy to the vagabond internet surfer or startup CTO hiring based on GitHub presence.

benatkin超过 9 年前

This is awesome. It makes me want to do something like it. How about if instead of putting it in a public repo, I put it in a private repo that I can use as a draft for a blog, so I could use it to gradually build an audience.

topherjaynes超过 9 年前

A great reminder that everyday we do learn something and should be thoughtful about documenting it. We often move to fast to realize that what we discovered, to get something down, is unique. Thanks for sharing and keep it up!

dbailey5超过 9 年前

Great Idea! started one too.. decided to hack together a quick script to build my readme <a href="https://github.com/drewbailey/til" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/drewbailey/til</a>

autotune超过 9 年前

You mean I could've scored upvotes by posting my wiki on here? Well better late than never...<a href="https://github.com/autotune/wiki" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/autotune/wiki</a>

franzwong超过 9 年前

This idea is awesome that it makes learning more effective by self-explaining what we've learnt, and the result can be referenced by ourselves in the future using the language of our own.

macromaniac超过 9 年前

I've been putting each fact I learn as a line in a til.yaml file for the last 6 months. I grep through all my til.yaml files any time I need to remember something. It's been useful.

__Joker超过 9 年前

This, daily TIL, like dairy has for me is nice way of introspection. I find whenever, if nothing else, I think for 5 mins about what I did everyday had immense value for me personally.

destroyer998超过 9 年前

That is an awesome idea.

dxhdr超过 9 年前

I don't understand the enthusiasm for this or the rampant forking going on.Most of these fall firmly under "let me google that for you."<pre><code> How do I check my Ubuntu version? How do I split a tmux window? How do I expand a clojure macro?</code></pre> Repeat for 300 more easily google-able questions... Actually I just realized, maybe I'm too old. If that's the case, here's a great tool: <a href="http://lmgtfy.com/?q=How+do+I+check+my+Ubuntu+version%3F" rel="nofollow">http://lmgtfy.com/?q=How+do+I+check+my+Ubuntu+version%3F</a>

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anttuofbodom超过 9 年前

I keep writing things down everywhere: OSX Notes, org-mode, Evernote, paper. Having it in one (public) GitHub repo is a great idea!

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leonardinius超过 9 年前

This is great.BTW I've lurked that concept from you just recently and started doing the same stuff on Sunday. Thanks for inspiration.

state超过 9 年前

Would be nice to connect this to Twitter and get an update when a new one appears. Have you thought of doing that?

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ghjnut超过 9 年前

I know this isn't intended to be stackoverflow, but it'd be cool to have a way to get feedback on things.

theyCallMeSwift超过 9 年前

This is one of the most interesting posts I've seen on HN in a while. Great job, keep up the good work!

arvinsim超过 9 年前

This just convinced to just don't bother with using github pages and use the README.md file instead

ymse超过 9 年前

Lots of good stuff here. I would appreciate a wiki-style site with short answers like these instead of searching {Google,DDG} and trawling the [stackoverflow] results.Not all of them are necessarily good practice though. This made me chuckle:What Is The Current [Git] Branch?<pre><code> git rev-parse --abbrev-ref HEAD </code></pre> (if you're reading this jbranchaud, try `git branch` :p)

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feed16超过 9 年前

I wish technology was simple enough that writing these TILs would be unnecessary.

jsgrahamus超过 9 年前

I thought TIL stood for Threaded Interpretive Language, as per Forth or Factor

ngeek超过 9 年前

Worthy personal cheat-sheet for own and others use. A good idea though.

dorfsmay超过 9 年前

Are github issues indexed as well as blog entries by search engine?

ausjke超过 9 年前

great idea, I use drupal to keep some notes myself, but this is concise and easier to access, when this list grows you may want to add a search button to it?

gansai超过 9 年前

thanks for sharing. I remember seeing a reddit section for TIL which is general. I too had some thoughts regarding the same to publish in my blog.

tarunkotia超过 9 年前

Thank you for sharing this! Thank you!

jamesmccann超过 9 年前

Really cool repo - nice work!

abrookewood超过 9 年前

This is a fantastic idea!

vctsg3超过 9 年前

What does TIL stand for?

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jeshan25超过 9 年前

love it! great work keep it up!