My dev superpower

At first this blog post title was more like "My GM [game master] superpower is my developer weakness" but I've figured it was not really true, so now it's just about my superpower 😎

And it's about reading.

I think one of the skill you should train as a tech person is reading. for real. The part you train also depends on the context. Speed reading and reading comprehensions are for me two different things. You want to be able to read fast to scan documentation, and then to be able to read and retains the actual needed information. It's two different skills, with probably vastly different training and benefits and whatnot.
I'm also not talking about thousand(s) of words per minute, but just like, above average.

In my previous company I've been consistently saying stuff like "Oh, I've read about x library/technology/concept/technique that could help us!". In general, that was true. Not always possible to use as in, though, of course, but you know, it's a step in the right direction.

The weakness in that though, is that I keep most of that stuff in my mind. I actually don't take a lot of notes. That makes information retrieval difficult. Sometimes I would need a dozen of minutes, or a few dozens, to find back the solution.

And for sure, that works well when you improvise stuff in a TTRPG, like while playing Invisible Sun by Monte Cook Games. It's really satisfying to weave imprecise stuff from memory but still make it work together so my players go "omg everything is connected". It is connected. The wow factor is more due to them pulling a random tarot card and me figuring out how the fuck to connect that through a one-sentence-to-one-paragraph-long ideas I prepare. Some of those ideas are already written and given to the game master of course, but you still have to connect and bring them back to your narrative.

But it doesn't work well enough for software engineering, in my opinion. First because it sounds insane and kinda weird to always have that perfect library or blog post up my sleeve, then go rummage through said sleeve for a bit and come back "HAHA! Found it!".
And also because I want to give more precise answers, and in a more timely manner.

Sometimes I also wish people could go through my findings by themselves too. I want people to be able to immersive themselves in a collection of ideas to link them together and sparks new ideas on their own. Not everyone wants to innovate and keeps themselves up to date, for sure, but I think it's useful they keep their edge in creativity and all.

So, I thought "okay, let's use some tools for that". I went with https://raindrop.io/ for my master thesis in 2022, and decided to keep trying it. You can see some of the results in my software engineering collection: https://raindrop.io/AdrianC/software-engineering-39188616

Aaaaand, it's not really convincing, isn't it? Because... I haven't written any notes or used that much tags with it. It's just an endless list of links.

Is that useful? For others, probably not.
For me? Maybe? I think it kinda works? Because, as I've said, I read quickly. And I can probably search in the collection from my imperfect and not-that-precise memory with success.
I still want to do better, but then again, I usually only check the title to remind myself of the content, and either start reading it directly or check the next one. The tags are mostly there to trim the results down, and the notes when the title isn't precise enough. Maybe sometimes for the search function too.

So yeah, I should probably try to train my note-taking skills now!

(and that blog post is me trying to train writing :P)