Ask HN: Anyone else use a single gigantic .txt file as a notetaking solution?
4 superconduct123 5 5/14/2025, 1:12:17 AM
For the last 3 years I've just been using notepad in windows and a single .txt file to keep notes for my programming job.
Every day I just open the file and add a new divider for the day at the top of the file like this:
May 13, 2025
------------------------
After 3 years I'm at 25,000 lines, 700KB in size
* Its super fast and lightweight
* notepad opens instantly
* notepad takes up very little screen space
* searching is still instant with CTRL + F
* Want to tag something? Just write "tag:something" and search for that later
It sounds kind of stupid at first, like how do you quickly get to old notes?
But I've realized over time I generally only care about the last week or 2 of notes and rarely reference older ones.
I'm curious if anyone else does this and what your stats are for the file and if you ran into any issues
I eventually broke it into years (YYYY-MM-DD-notes.txt and just grep'd the directory.
Finally I made it to markdown files also stored in the same directory.
It was great for searching.