How to organize libraries and links of programming information

Question

I have an email account whose sole purpose it is to store interesting and useful links to programming articles, code, and blog posts. It has become a little knowledgebase of sorts. I can even do a search on it, which is pretty cool.

However, after using this account for a couple of years, I now have 775 links, and it has become this big blob of amorphous information, most of which I have never looked at again. I take comfort in the fact that, if I really needed to, I could find something in there again, if I even remember putting it in there in the first place. But it has developed a "smell," if you will.

How are you organizing your programming library of cool stuff? Do you have a system or tool, and is it better than the way I'm doing it?

Answer 1

I would use something that is made for storing bookmarks. I use delicious.com for all of my bookmarks. The tagging system works perfectly for technology sites because you can tag each page with a specific language or tech abbreviation. This coupled with the Delicious Bookmarks plugin will make it very easy to tag sites and get back to them.

1. Use one word or abbreviations for languages: java c# vb.net python
2. Use acronyms for technologies: wpf wcf

I used to use the standard bookmark system in the browser but since I bounce around through various machines and browsers throughout the day I started to use bookmark synchronizers. Both Foxmarks and the one that google came out with. But neither I was completely satisfied with. Plus delicious has a great web interface to it as a decent api to extend for your own purpose.

Answer 2

IMHO, using Evernote to store this information is great.

1) you can go back and search through it easily 2) organize by tags and "notebooks collections" 3) available on multiple platforms (even mobile) 4) available as browser plugins (for direct archiving in-browser)

The only drawback is it's copy-paste functionality is a little lacking (it sometimes doesn't import/display the CSS styles correctly).

Otherwise, it's a great alternative to store web "bookmarks" (and also archive the content at the same time).