Professor Henry Jones: Well, he who finds the Grail must face the final challenge.
Indiana Jones: What final challenge?
Professor Henry Jones: Three devices of such lethal cunning.
Indiana Jones: Booby traps?
Professor Henry Jones: Oh yes. But I found the clues that will safely take us through, in the Chronicles of St. Anselm.
Indiana Jones: But what are they?
[pause]
Indiana Jones: Can't you remember?
Professor Henry Jones: I wrote them down in my Diary so that I wouldn't *have* to remember.From Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade via IMDB
How many times have found yourself looking for the exact syntax of some operation you need for your application?
I'm not saying that developers should only know how to search for the information on the net. a good software developer needs to know a lot of things on a lot of subjects, but not to memorize the exact phrase to use for every single operation possible.
After finding myself looking at the Internet for the hundredth time to find how to serialize an object (two simple lines that somehow I keep forgetting) I decided there must be a better way.
This blog post introduced me to the idea of keeping a coding "spell book" to keep coding related information from simple syntax to complicate tricks. The idea is to keep a notebook with all your learned tricks and tips for quick reference in the future.
Instead of a paper notebook you can use a WIKI that gives the ability to search & tag. See Dave's SQL spellbook for instructions.
Personally I prefer to use Evernote (in public beta right now) to keep my book of code.
Evernote helps me sort, tag and search my notes. it syncs my notes between my computers, and even have web site where I can view and edit my notes.
How do you keep your code?
Labels: Productivity, Tools