Engineering notes

A good software engineer should always take notes on the task that they are doing.

Before starting any task, open a notebook.

While doing the task, capture all the context in that notebook.

Profit!

It's more easily said than done. Every few months I notice that I have drifted off and stopped doing it, and need to force myself to get back to it. The key to avoid that is probably in reducing the friction as much as possible.

Benefits of having engineering notes

• It's easy to share what you are doing with other team members.
• Avoid Googling the same thing over and over again.
• Context switching is much easier when all the context is captured in the notebook.
• At the end of a task, it can easily be converted into a blog post.