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Note Taking in Runtime Configuration
How I Use Runtime Configuration Files as a Substitute for Notes
How many developers have a notepad chock full of technical notes that they know they’ll need later? And how quickly does it fill up? And how often do you review it and clean out the old information?
Mine used to be full of things like IP addresses, command snippets, command output, URLs, and even some JSON. While the approach I’m going to outline doesn’t fix all these problems, it should fix many of them.
Runtime Configuration
Depending on how experienced you are as a developer, you may not be aware of the runtime configuration file on your Unix operating system ( ~/.zshrc on some Linux distros, ~/.bashrc on others, and ~/.profile on Mac). This file can be used to alias commands and export variables for re-use in your terminal. I’ve typically only seen engineers venture into this file when it’s necessary, or when it’s called for during installation of some software they’d like to use. They follow the steps verbatim in the instructions and ignore the file altogether afterwards. However, even seasoned engineers can neglect the note taking power inherent in the runtime configuration file.
