I always take pen & paper notes. Was forced to try digital notes in high school and it just doesn’t help with remembering the content nearly as well. When you’re writing, you have to slow down more, which helps you reflect, and I think there’s research that says the physical act of writing helps form the new connections in your brain? Maybe a while from now I’ll look seriously behind the times, but so be it
For my coding notes I’ve been scribbling initial notes on scrap paper, then when I’m done with a section or concept, I’ll transfer it in neater writing to my “real” notebook. While I’m learning, I can jot down ideas and insert things without worrying about readability, then later the reorganization and rewriting process acts like a review.
I also use OneNote (desktop app) and here’s a neat feature. Go to the View menu and then “Dock to Desktop”. OneNote will then minimize itself to the right side of your screen and all other windows will stay to the left. It removes everything from the interface other than the OneNote page you’re currently editing. To get it out of this mode, just click the little diagonal arrows in the upper-right corner.
Cool and very smart strategy.
Overtime, I think there’ll be a very long list of links cause as you know in programming you’ll have to browse wide, so I’ll save links/code snippet in different folders in my Google drive.
Back when I started to learn The Basics of Web Development, I remember taking a bunch of notes. And they were quite long … But since I had a bunch of time on my plate, I enjoyed “wasting” it on note taking. It was really helpful, because 1,5 year later I still remember a bunch of stuff I went through.
And now since I started the Full Stack Course over here, I haven’t been Note Taking that much, because I thought I could just come back to the lesson, or open my book, or just Google. But it wasn’t that simple when I got stuck at some point … I just wished that I took those Notes, and remembered some more stuff of the Lesson.
So yeah, overall I think that Note Taking should be important with learning anything. And each of us finds a different approach to do that. Think that I will get back to it, just because it feels right
Will I seem too weird, if I tell you I don’t take notes?
I have this notepad open in front if me that I put notes in whenever I encounter something that is important and I think I won’t remember but it’s usually not learning related stuff.
In terms of coding, I just keep my annotated codes in my computer but that’s about it.
I actually just felt the benefit of handwriting just yesterday. I felt so engaged and can make the ideas set on the paper where I can analyze them and grasp the juice out of them. About highlighting and making sections that was something I thought to do too. I’m actually going to buy all the things I’m gonna need to start this for serious.
One thing to add is that being organized is a huge deal when it comes to learning. The problem is we cannot just memorized everything, but we can have references, cheatsheets that can help us summarize concepts.
Felt so happy to have someone share old school learning.
I’ve found that once I’ve finished puzzling through a concept such that there aren’t any missing pieces that I don’t fully understand I’ll remember it, in concept if not entirely. I might have to look at the docs for a syntax refresher but that’s good exercise too. I also treat other people’s questions here as refreshers/learning tools.
Albert Einstein - “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough .”
If I’m not mistaken, there have been studies about how note taking is actually done best by hand , pen on paper, the good old fashioned way. Sometimes the wheel doesn’t need reinventing.
Seeing as you addressed staying organised, I’ve found that index tabs within notebooks and writing the topics covered on the front of the notebooks also helps staying on top of things.
I can’t agree more. Thanks for sharing your experience, I’d love to keep in touch to see how our old fashioned technique would work for us. If it’s helpful at its best, it can save hours of learning and finish any path on Codecademy at a constant pace of learning.
LOL. I’m not saving every link/snippet. When I find the documentation that gives me full understanding of a concept I’ve struggled with, I save that link.
Here for this!! –– exchanging ideas and learning new tactics from each other so we can all get better, together! 
I’m not saving every link/snippet. When I find the documentation that gives me full understanding of a concept I’ve struggled with, I save that link.