Keeping Personal Cheat Sheets as a Software Engineer

  • If you like this idea, you might want to check out Cheatography - it's a tool for creating stylish cheat sheets. I used it a little when it was first announced, but haven't kept up with it. It's a great idea, and the developer was really friendly when I was checking it out.

    http://www.cheatography.com/

  • I've tried this several times, but I always find that by the time I've been stumped by something enough times to write it down, I'm on the verge of having it learned anyway. So, my cheat sheets just become random bits of paper full of stuff I already know, and I start new ones. Rinse and repeat. It's a nifty trick but I don't think there's any substitute for good ol' repetition and understanding.

  • http://www.mediaatelier.com/CheatSheet/

    Hold 'command' key to see all shortcuts for current application.

  • I have a git repo with work notes in.

    It all goes in there:

        root@osboxes:/space/git/work/notes# ls | head
        7z
        abs-guide
        algorithms
        anacron
        angularjs
        ansible
        ant
        apache2
        apt_and_dpkg
    
    300 folders and counting...

  • Not quite the same, but similar: Print-to-PDF. I've been doing this instead of bookmarks for years now, and as a result have a huge library of local PDF's, usable offline, for all kinds of technologies that I'm interested in/use regularly. With a few key searches I can find all the docs on luarocks, or mysql FAQ's, etc. - I find this a great way to have searchable local documentation for the moments I need to look things up. Its not quite a cheat sheet, but having my own local searchable PDF archive for all the technical howto/tutorial-style HN articles of interest over the years has been invaluable.

  • I keep appending to a file in my home directory. I've aliased it too so that I can access it quickly. Every ~month I email it to myself or back it up elsewhere.

    $ alias ed

    alias ed='$EDITOR ~/.diary"

    The file looks something like this:

    # 4/3/2015

    Command Comments

    -------------------------------------------

    M-l # Emacs, lowercase next word

  • Hm. How about a cheat-web-link? This stuff's gotta already be online, neatly summarized.

  • My vim cheatsheet lives in my dotfiles repo. Always gets cloned into a fresh system.