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Discussion on: I Bet You Don't Keep A Developer Journal: 3 Reasons You Should

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omril321 profile image
Omri Lavi

Hey Simon, thanks for the interesting article! Usually what I do is keeping a note on notion with various useful things I learn. In addition, I maintain a "scripts.sh" file with aliases of all the commands I see myself using in the future. It's a major time saver!
I have a question about your notes thought - how do you organize/format them? Is there an example of a note you can share?

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allthecode profile image
Simon Barker

Hi Omri,

Your scripts.sh sounds good as well! Yeh, here is a note that comes up when "Ionic audio" in the search field. It deal with an issue I had with ducking audio with a Cordova plugin. Not all that structured, just enough that I can find it again and give me context.
note

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omril321 profile image
Omri Lavi

Hey Simon, thanks for the example! It sounds like a good practice writing such notes.
It's really awesome that you find the time to organize the note each time. Do you write a summary at the end of your day? Or straight ahead when you have something to write?

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allthecode profile image
Simon Barker

Depends how engrossed I am I guess. If it's an obvious "this will be useful" then I pop in a note ASAP. Otherwise I tend to take a short note when task switching or a summary at the end of the day. I try to make it as easy as possible to take a note so that it's just part of my natural flow.

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ishaan001 profile image
Ishaan

Rtr morshed rrr FF ttr f rre

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davidsgbr profile image
David SG • Edited

Hi @omril321 , your scripts.sh called my attention. I’ve built a CLI generator that might be very useful for you, it can simplify your scripts and document them to make easier to share with other people.
Please consider having a look on that: aux4.io
Feel free to reach me out if you have any questions.

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Simon Barker

Hi David, this is a cool idea - well done

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David SG

Thank you Simon!

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omril321 profile image
Omri Lavi

Hey David, that's some cool project! How does it treat environmental variables? I didn't find a reference to it at aux4.io/learn

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David SG

@omril321 , thank you for checking that out. You can use environment variables like you are using in the command line. I've added a section providing more details at aux4.io/learn. Please check that out once you have a chance.
I am pretty sure aux4 can be a game-changer for your scripts. It would mean the world to me if you could let me know in case there is something else stopping you from starting using that. Please feel free to DM me at any time. I will be glad to help and have your feedback.

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omril321 profile image
Omri Lavi

Thanks David! If I'll speak frankly, I'm yet to find the advantages over well organized shell scripts, and using aux4 does seem to require some learning. Tell me please, on which cases would you recommend someone to start using aux4? What problems will it solve after which amount of effort?

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David SG

Sure, I understand your point, you have something that is already working. So let me try to point some benefits.

The aux4 learning curve is low if you are already familiar with JSON. I know it's not your case, but for another person who is not familiar with bash scripts, they can easily write their scripts but just following the structure.
You also can organize in whatever structure makes more sense to you use that. e.g:

aux4 my-project-a delete-kafka-topics /* it can delete all the kafka topics related to your project */

aux4 my-project-b s3 upload-configuration /* copy a file from your local to a specific bucket/path related to your project */
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You can share the script with your co-workers, you can create a package for each project, for example, and they can install it. It's great because it's common to have people in the team not familiar with bash, so they can just become users from what you created.

aux4 aux4 install my-project-a.json
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Instead of adding a lot of comments to your scripts to remember what are they doing, aux4 structure already allows you to document the parameters and commands, and it generates documentation in runtime, listing the sub-commands in each section, and also describing the parameters.
When you share it, you don't need to explain to the other people how to use that, they will know by just typing aux4.

I would challenge you to migrate two or three commands you have in your script to aux4 and see how you like, I am pretty sure you will end up migrating everything there in the end. It's addictive :)

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omril321 profile image
Omri Lavi

Thanks for the explanation! I understand it better now. Next time I'll need to write many scripts to a shared project, I'll remember aux4. Well done David! :)

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David SG

Thank you!