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JeremyNicoll · 29 Jan 2021, 11:08 PM

I hope you're not feeling 'got at' by how I replied.

The point about making notes is something that very few people seem to grasp. Either they think they'll remember, or they see no need for notes at all. Consider how you'd feel if none of the doctors or lawyers you've dealt with had kept notes on your cases...

I worked as a programmer (of micros and mainframes) and also a 'systems programmer' (which then meant someone who installed, customised and tested system software - so eg new versions of an OS) at a UK bank. As sysprogs, we were regarded as the technical experts (and would chase problems that caused us (the bank) outages (eg no cash machines working for a day) with software and hardware companies until we got them to admit fault and fix their products). A large part of the job was writing meaningful notes on how stuff was done.

Partly that was because months or years later a mistake in installing/configuring something might cause problems, and we had to be able to work out how it happened. Partly it was because people got paged in the middle of the night to fix things that they personally had not worked on ... so had to be able to find and read what a colleague had done.

I continue to do this when setting up my own computers. I have notes on how and why I installed and configured and used every piece of software, and the problems caused by bad decisions, and how I got around them (if I did) for every home pc I have ever had. Whenever I install something to try it out, and later get rid of it, I keep the notes on how I installed and removed it, but also why I chose not to keep it, what it did well (if anything) and what it was poor at doing.

Right now I'm about to start setting-up a Win 10 pc, having used Win 8.1 for years. One of the first things I will do is skim through the notes on how I set up W8, and then the W8.1 upgrade, to see if that reminds me of a need to find an equivalent solution on Win 10.

It's becoming rarer for personal / home-user PC software to be properly documented. One of the email clients I have used, now unfortunately no longer supported, came with a well-written explanatory manual - with screenshots of every feature, explanations of how things worked, and helped people understand why they might or might not choose to turn certain features on or off. That ran to about 115 pages of A4.

Some of the PC software I use used to be an IBM product, so although it's now developed and maintained by volunteers, when they took it on they also got the proper documentation from IBM and they maintain that in sync with the things they do to the product. There's thousands of pages of detailed documentation for that. No-one reads it all, but it's available & acts as a reference for what every last bit of the product is meant to do.

Anyway... if I, as an "expert", think I NEED to keep notes in things, I think everyone else needs to do so too.

29 Jan 2021, 11:08 PM	#6
JeremyNicoll Essential Contributor Join Date: Dec 2017 Location: Scotland Posts: 488	I hope you're not feeling 'got at' by how I replied. The point about making notes is something that very few people seem to grasp. Either they think they'll remember, or they see no need for notes at all. Consider how you'd feel if none of the doctors or lawyers you've dealt with had kept notes on your cases... I worked as a programmer (of micros and mainframes) and also a 'systems programmer' (which then meant someone who installed, customised and tested system software - so eg new versions of an OS) at a UK bank. As sysprogs, we were regarded as the technical experts (and would chase problems that caused us (the bank) outages (eg no cash machines working for a day) with software and hardware companies until we got them to admit fault and fix their products). A large part of the job was writing meaningful notes on how stuff was done. Partly that was because months or years later a mistake in installing/configuring something might cause problems, and we had to be able to work out how it happened. Partly it was because people got paged in the middle of the night to fix things that they personally had not worked on ... so had to be able to find and read what a colleague had done. I continue to do this when setting up my own computers. I have notes on how and why I installed and configured and used every piece of software, and the problems caused by bad decisions, and how I got around them (if I did) for every home pc I have ever had. Whenever I install something to try it out, and later get rid of it, I keep the notes on how I installed and removed it, but also why I chose not to keep it, what it did well (if anything) and what it was poor at doing. Right now I'm about to start setting-up a Win 10 pc, having used Win 8.1 for years. One of the first things I will do is skim through the notes on how I set up W8, and then the W8.1 upgrade, to see if that reminds me of a need to find an equivalent solution on Win 10. It's becoming rarer for personal / home-user PC software to be properly documented. One of the email clients I have used, now unfortunately no longer supported, came with a well-written explanatory manual - with screenshots of every feature, explanations of how things worked, and helped people understand why they might or might not choose to turn certain features on or off. That ran to about 115 pages of A4. Some of the PC software I use used to be an IBM product, so although it's now developed and maintained by volunteers, when they took it on they also got the proper documentation from IBM and they maintain that in sync with the things they do to the product. There's thousands of pages of detailed documentation for that. No-one reads it all, but it's available & acts as a reference for what every last bit of the product is meant to do. Anyway... if I, as an "expert", think I NEED to keep notes in things, I think everyone else needs to do so too.