4 Effective Tools for Maintaining Your Daily Dev Log
To establish an effective daily dev log practice, you’re going to need a tool that not only provides editing capabilities but also helps you structure and navigate your content.
I’ve maintained a dev log off and on throughout my 21-year career, and when I’ve been consistent, it has paid serious dividends. I’ve tried a plethora of tools, from TiddlyWiki to Evernote. More recently I’ve invested a lot of time in purpose-built PKM tools, and I’ve found that they are incredibly effective for this type of work.
Here are four tools that I’ve tried and can recommend:
Dendron (Free & Open Source)
Find it at https://www.dendron.so.
Dendron is my current tool of choice. Why? It’s a VSCode plugin, and I can install those on my work computer. Dendron supports Markdown, has an intuitive hierarchical data model, and supports tagging and wiki-style linking (and embedding!). For dev logging, it has a journaling feature with a calendar view. I’ve been using it for a few weeks now, and I’m digging it.
Obsidian (Free for Personal Use)
Find it at https://obsidian.md.
I use Obsidian on my personal machine to manage my digital notes. It also supports Markdown, as well as tagging and wiki-style linking. It is structure agnostic, but some plugins overlay stronger opinions. Its journaling feature is quite similar to Dendron’s, and I’ve used it for daily logging of my personal work for months.
Org Mode (Free & Open Source)
Find it at https://orgmode.org.
Org Mode is the oldest tool on this list and likely the most powerful, as it is part of the Emacs ecosystem. That also gives it the steepest learning curve. Org Mode has its own syntax and supports tagging and linking, along with a powerful TODO system. Before giving up, I used Org Mode for my dev log for roughly one year. I just couldn’t get comfortable in Emacs!
Logseq (Free & Open Source)
Find it at https://logseq.com.
I’m least familiar with Logseq, an interesting hybrid supporting both Markdown and Org Mode syntax. It is agnostic about filesystem structure but expresses a strong opinion that pages should be structured as outlines. Besides that, it has rough feature parity with Dendron and Obsidian. I’ll be playing with it more in the near future!
It does not matter which of these tools you select (or if you select one that isn’t listed!). What does matter is that it works for you and runs in your environment. Happy dev logging!
