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Do any programmers out there keep a personal wiki? Either locally or online.

What do you use your wiki for? or what might you use one for?

I was thinking of starting a personal wiki as a place to record documentation and and other documents for my personal projects, and various notes etc, but how else is a personal (maybe private) Wiki useful to a programmer/developer? What type of things would you put in a personal Wiki?

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A wiki seems really complex. I've always used a text document – TheLQ Mar 8 '11 at 0:04
@TheLQ not with something like TiddlyWiki which was suggested below. Not compared to say a dozen or two text files when your notes start getting too large. – Matthew Scharley Mar 8 '11 at 2:17
@TheLQ Oh yes the .txt. I usually leave mine in little commented out segments of my code... – Gabe Feb 10 '12 at 14:02
I use wunderkit. – Aris Bartee Feb 10 '12 at 15:12
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I use evernote, while not a wiki, it does everything i need with mobile access. Although I hate having all my "stuff" tied to something like evernote. Anyone know of any open source alternatives? Something i could host on my own servers? – Ominus Feb 10 '12 at 15:16
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11 Answers

up vote 9 down vote accepted

I use TiddlyWiki a single html file wiki with lots of plugin possibilities, it combines great with dropbox.

The getting things plugin makes it into a great tool for managing personal projects..

And as such i use it for

  • current projects, little things I need to remember
  • server names
  • who knows what
  • internal sites
  • hour codes to book hours.
  • brainstorming/research
  • ToDO lists
  • Idea's for pet projects I might want to do sometime.

What I don't use it for any more :

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+1. This provides the best balance between the complexity of a wiki and the simplicity of a text tile. You don't have to bother with managing a server and all the security nonsense that goes with it, and with TiddlyWiki you can more easily search your document and link the various concepts within the document together via hyperlinks. – S.Robins Feb 10 '12 at 23:19
up vote 9 down vote

When I join a new company, it usually fills up with:

  • Remote desktop / VM names.
  • Folder paths for project documentation.
  • SQL scripts for common fixes/cleanups in data.
  • Common web-service end points / WSDL locations (I know you SOA guys...UDDI ;))
  • URL's to time sheet systems, bug tracking systems etc.
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+1 That's a good list, but I would assume most of that would be useful to other devs, and should be in a company-wide wiki, not a personal one. – FrustratedWithFormsDesigner Mar 7 '11 at 21:37
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You'd hope companies would be smart enough to support a global Wiki...sadly most I've been with don't. – Martin Blore Mar 7 '11 at 21:41
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Oh yeah, ideally, those SQL scripts you're talking about are best put into source control (if they live long enough, they start to mutate over time, version control could be more important than you think). ...in an ideal world... ;) – FrustratedWithFormsDesigner Mar 7 '11 at 21:53
up vote 6 down vote

Typical scenario: customer says "Hey, this doesn't work anymore". I spend half a day finding a solution, and tell the customer what to do. One year later, another customer (or possibly the same one, of course) asks the exact same question. No way I can remember the complete solution after a year, so I effectively lose half a day looking for the exact same thing.

Enter the personal wiki: I use it mainly to assure the above scenario never ever happens again. Not only for customer solutions, but also for programming related solutions (e.g. small samples of difficult-to-understand patterns, quick hacks, ...)

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Ultimately, that sort of thing (solution to weird problem) should go into a team wiki so other team members can fill in and resovle the problem if you're away. – FrustratedWithFormsDesigner Mar 7 '11 at 21:38
should there be other team members, they could just as easily enter the adress into their browser as I can. The only reason I call it 'personal' wiki is because for a large part I work alone. It's confluence btw. – stijn Mar 8 '11 at 7:37
And a year after you put it on your wiki you spend half a day finding the solution on the wiki, then another half a day trying to figure out what made you think that solution was a good idea in the first place. – Joel Etherton Feb 10 '12 at 14:34
@JoelEtherton first part I disagree: a decent wiki has good search functionality that lets you find stuff in no time. Never had problems with that. Second part, depends. I noticed that by entering things in a wiki I'm forcing myself to double check the solution and description. But indeed, from time to time mayhem slips through and when reading it again I'm all like "what did I just read, did I even write this?" – stijn Feb 10 '12 at 15:19
@FrustratedWithFormsDesigner I've done something similar to what stijn has said, but I used a personal wiki (tiddlywiki) for quick jotting down of notes, and then if it is a situation I felt like could benefit co-workers, I would clean it up and add it to the company wiki – GSto Feb 10 '12 at 16:08
up vote 1 down vote

I use a personal wiki to store most of my "personal" information such as:

  • Software plans/ideas
  • Notes
  • Book/reading list
  • References of things I seem to regualrly forget
  • Links to webpages
  • Todo lists
  • etc.

I use MediaWiki on a (seperate, dedicated) home server.

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Doing the exact same thing could be against a company policy in some places ... – Job Mar 7 '11 at 21:43
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@Job: Well, I'm just programming as a hobby so I have little idea of this (15 year old middle school student). I didn't mean to keep company data on a home server. – Anto Mar 7 '11 at 21:45
Personally, I would/do use Dropbox & Instapaper for that, with the added benefit I can easily copy/paste the folder(s) to a USB key (or my mobile) for offline reading (as my flat is in a black hole where no phone, wifi or lan connection survives for some reason). – wildpeaks Mar 7 '11 at 22:15
up vote 1 down vote

I use it for keeping personal notes about what I'm doing, changelogs for updates, notes from meetings / emails / conversations and stuff of that nature. Some of this information gets moved over to a company wiki eventually, but I like to jot my own notes down so that I can write in my own style, and not worry about formatting/clarity/completeness etc. Some of things I write I do move to a company wiki eventually though.

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up vote 1 down vote

I use Evernote for my personal wiki. I keep code snippets in there, along with code I've used for workarounds, and random article snippets.

I like Evernote because it's available online, on my smartphone, and has a desktop app. It also has a clever plugin for Chrome that allows me to just select some text on a page and add a note to my Notebooks. Its use of tagging and it's searchability is also really great.

Finally, it's nice because I can snap a picture of anything with my smartphone and add it as a note to Evernote. So I can keep pictures of whiteboards and things.

The only "wiki-esque" feature it lacks seems to be the ability to link to other notes, but I haven't found that to be a big deal.

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+1, evernote is such the way to fly here. The real added bonus is you can integrate it into your chrome or smartphone searches. Also, you can link to notes -- right click on note and choose copy note link. – Wyatt Barnett Feb 10 '12 at 15:12
up vote 0 down vote

I use Wikidpad with an addin todo Extension to keep track of stuff to do, a whole load of unstructured reference information and just about anything that doesn't have any other obvious place to put it.

I'd be lost without it.

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up vote 0 down vote

is a personal wiki any use? You only store stuff relevant to you as opposed to the team (which is much more useful).

So, for a personal wiki, I would use it for bits n pieces: usually hints and code snippets (ie how-to type stuff). That's about all I think. I might keep it updated with a list of all the projects I've worked on just so I can remember them when they re-appear for maintenance.

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up vote 0 down vote

Ever since my first day as a professional programmer I keep notebooks on paper, on which I write down every day what I'm busy with, how much time I've spent on which task, important commands, server names, notes from meetings, who I spoke with about what subject etc.

These notebooks are incredibly useful, for example for filling in my timesheet (where I need to know how many hours I've spent on what task).

It's a personal choice ofcourse, but I like it much better on paper than in an electronic file. I don't need a computer or even electricity for my paper notebook. The only downside is that searching in the notebook is a little harder than it would be if it's on the computer.

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up vote 0 down vote

I use vimwiki to do most of the things other people have answered with: notes, todo's, code snippets, etc.

But mostly I find it a convenient place to keep a sort of log -- I jot down notes about calls I get, problems I solve, and generally what I accomplish throughout the day.

It makes a great set of documentation to refer back to, and helps me keep on task. It also helps me get back on task when I'm interrupted.

I use vimwiki because everything is stored as plain text, it has a nice 'diary' feature which, basically, auto creates a file I can write my log in each day, and it's integrated with the editor I use most often.

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protected by ChrisF♦ Feb 10 '12 at 15:20

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