Comment by jjice | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jjice | Hacker News Reader

I searched far and wide for a good note taking app a few years ago, only to find that the best solution for me was right in front of me the entire time.

  git init fall2020

Git lets me keep track of everything, and I have free hosting at multiple different websites, or my own server if I want to. It's simple and customizable, and depending on what type of notes, I have different scripts to automate new notes and searching.

Next semester, I'm going to run the above command and then make a directory for each course I'm taking. In there, there will be a series of markdown documents numbered 'nn.md' with a header at the top of the file with the date and the subject. After that, it's just plain markdown. I alternate between VS Code and Vim, but both get the same job done. When I'm done, I just 'git add . && git commit' and move about my day.

Since I currently use GitHub private repos for hosting, if I'm walking to class, I can view the rendered Markdown right on my phone. This is nice for getting a quick recap about what the last class covered.

I also use a Git repo for my journal, but with different ways of formatting entries. The entire thing is very extensible, but not as friendly as some other note taking apps if you don't like plain Markdown. Writing a web interface for this setup wouldn't require much work, and it's something that's on my list of things to do.

I've found that its hard to beat plaintext markdown notes with git. been taking notes like this for the past ten years and now have 20k+ markdown notes. just launched a markdown note taking plugin built on top of vscode to help with this sort of workflow: https://dendron.so

Even though it's restrictive, I find most of my notes of a creative nature are all done and markdown and git. Another commenter was saying how their best work was on pencil and paper, and I agree, I'm very creative in that medium as well. The only thing that comes close on the computer is markdown.

I do use OneNote at work, but it's a classic example of where the tool molds the use case. Typically I will use OneNote to track a problem, or gather notes and links from other sources. It's a great way to put together a dossier on a problem so to speak, but I don't really use my creative juices in OneNote.

I like this approach and used something similar for a while myself. For me the main drawback was syncing between devices. I had to remember to commit and push on one device and then pull on another. Maybe not a big deal for lecture notes, but a little fussy for just adding a book to a "to read" list.

Also in time I found I never really used any version control features. Backing up to a remote was the only thing I needed.

I feel like this is half a solution to me. I use Git too, but it does nothing about how notes are structured or linked, for which I lean on sublime, Obsidian and Zettelkasten.

I recently started with Obsidian which I sync up via DropBox using a text editor on my machine or Markor on Android (still haven't selected an iOS equivalent.. tips welcome). I see Zettelkasten mentioned in tandem with Obsidian frequently but I can't figure out what it does? Is it just timestamping for notes?

Zettelkasten in digital form has been largely bastardized for some reason that I haven't quite figured out. The original ZK doesn't have timestamps and timestamps are such a terrible, uninformative, non-contextual way to codify notes. ZK originally uses a hierarchical and sequential numbering system that immediately tells you when it was created in relation to other notes and tells you its hierarchical relationship to neighboring notes (note 1a2 is a child of 1a; 1b is a sibling of 1a; and if 1 is an overarching theme, 1a, 1b, and 1a2 are each sub-ideas under that theme).

I've resorted to using the original numbering system manually, but I'm still waiting for a tool that understands them and knows how to work with them (or maybe I'll get fed up after a while and make my own).

I augment this slightly by using Typora. It's nice for writing inline and fenced math blocks (with LaTeX), which is pretty invaluable for my maths subjects, I've found.

It's nice since it renders the markdown while you write it, which I kinda need when writing LaTeX.

It's an offline tool, but I'm pretty much always near my laptop, so that's not much of a big deal for me. Tbh, having it offline was kinda a bonus for me.

No Vim support though, which is a bit frustrating.

I use git as well to track my notes, I just haven't found a good editor yet which is equally as important. Sublime Text or any code editor works fine enough for Markdown, but I really miss the ability to have hyperlinks in my notes. Markdown links are just extremely ugly to look at and overly verbose.

Some good choices are Typora, Mark Text, and Zettlr. I’m actually in the process of creating my own, inspired of each of these.

This is also the conclusion I came to after years of trying different things

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