Monday, October 24, 2022

Being overstaffed hurts a team in counterintuitive ways.



It feels like throwing more engineers at a project ought to make the work go faster. But it doesn't, past a certain point. Fred Brooks published The Mythical Man-Month in 1975, wherein he coined Brooks's Law: "Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later." To my knowledge, there are no known exceptions to this axiom. It is always true.

Friday, October 14, 2022

Notenik


Introducing Notenik

If you're looking for a note-taking app that does more than just record your notes, then you might want to consider some of Notenik's key attributes.

• Proudly Made for the Mac

Just in time for the modern resurgence of Apple's premier platform, and M1-ready, Notenik runs with ease on all reasonably modern Macs.

• 100% Free and Open-Source

No upfront cost, no in-app purchases, no subscriptions, no advertising, no interest in your personal data – just download from the Mac App Store and start running, with all features enabled. Source code published under the MIT license, and available on GitHub.

• Text Files Are Forever

Notenik stores all of your notes in plain text files that can be opened, viewed and edited using any text editor, or your favorite Markdown editor. Notes are collected into folders, and you can store a Notenik folder anywhere you like. Sync to the cloud and to other devices and platforms using your favorite service.

• Markdown and Then Some

You can format your notes using Markdown, with support for footnotes, citations, definition lists and MathJax. Use wiki-style double bracket notation to link from one note to another. Automatically generate a Table of Contents for a single long note, or for an entire collection of notes.

• Plays Well With Others

Import, Export, Publish, Share, Edit. Access via a custom URL scheme. Generate HTML in a variety of predetermined formats, or in custom page designs. Use scripts and templates to sort, filter, and even generate an entire website. Your notes will never be held hostage when they're stored using Notenik.

• And Then There Are Fields

Every Notenik note consists of multiple fields. Of course there's always a Title and a Body, but you needn't stop there. Add a Tags field and see your notes organized by tag. Add a Link field to store a URL. Add a Date field to track a due date or a publication date. Add a Seq field to add an arbitrary sequence number. Add an Author field to maintain a list of your favorite quotations. Sort your collection of notes using any of these fields. Each Notenik collection (aka folder) can use a different set of fields. Fields can be of different types. The possibilities, if not exactly endless, are at least quite numerous.

• Thoroughly Documented

The Notenik Knowledge Base contains everything you might ever want to know about Notenik – stored in its own Notenik collection of notes! Open from within Notenik (look beneath the Help menu), or access on the Web. Or for a brief introduction, with screen shots, see the Notenik Intro. Or see a more detailed list of features to help you compare Notenik to other similar apps.

• Actively Supported, Maintained and Enhanced

I'm Herb Bowie, the developer. I respond to all emails, and am generally happy to accommodate requests for fixes and further enhancements. I try to publish one or two significant updates each month. If you have a missing feature or software quirk that's bothering you, then let me know, and I'll see what I can do.