Why I keep a public notebook
- notes
- writing
Most of what I learn building something evaporates the moment it works. The bug is fixed, the feature ships, and the three hours of being wrong that got me there leave no trace — except a commit message that says “fix edge case” and helps no one, including future me.
So I write it down here. Not the polished version — the working one.
The thinking outlasts the artifact
A finished tool tells you what I decided. It rarely tells you why, and it never tells you what I tried first and abandoned. But the why and the dead ends are the reusable part. The code is specific to one problem; the reasoning transfers.
When I hit the same shape of problem a year later, I don’t want the old code. I want the note that says “I tried X, it fell apart because Y, so Z.” That note is worth more than the repository.
In the open, on purpose
Writing in public keeps me honest. It’s easy to tell yourself a tidy story about a decision in private. It’s harder when you have to set it down where someone might read it and ask an obvious question you skipped.
None of this is meant to be authoritative. It’s a workbench, not a lectern — think of it as looking over my shoulder while I figure something out. If a note here saves you a wrong turn I already took, that’s the whole point.