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How I make notes for my courses

I use a couple of tricks to take notes really fast in class and update them in a very short amount of time after each class.

I also publish my notes on Github for most of the courses I'm taking recently, but depending on the course, it may not be possible for me to cover all courses.

Taking notes

The software I use to take notes depends on the class being taught.

• If the course is math-heavy, i.e. notes use math equations more commonly than code blocks, then I'll use Microsoft Word to write my notes.
• If the course is programming-heavy, i.e notes use code blocks more often than equations, then I'll use Markdown to write my notes.
• If neither apply, I'll use Google docs. However, for reasons other than the fact that it is tedious to sync stuff from Google Docs, notes I take there won't appear in this repository.

I use Microsoft Word for its versatile equation editor. It's far from perfect, but it's way more efficient than LaTeX, as you can see the equation in real-time so you don't have to waste time looking at LaTeX code. Equations take way less keystrokes to type than LaTeX. The complexity of my documents do not demand what LaTeX can do that MS Word can't... yet. I use keyboard shortcuts to place headers (CMD+1/CMD+2/...).

Code blocks are a bit hard to place as I use a specific MS Word style for it, and it does require a bit of clicking. Hence, for courses where the notes I take may use more code blocks, I choose to use Markdown. Both MS Word and Markdown have a very similar feature set, the only difference being how easy it is to implement something. For example, MS Word is way better at Math, whilst Markdown is way better at writing code blocks.

I do not use LaTeX because it is quite wordy, its source code is hard to read, and I can emulate most features of it in MS Word or Markdown.

If you want to see how to make use of Microsoft Word's equation editor, click here. If you find MS Word's equation editor useful and want to copy equations written there to Markdown or LaTeX without using Pandoc, use this tool (it has a very specific use case -- for single line equations, you probably don't need this).

How to paste images in Markdown without clogging up files

On Github, pasting images creates an attachment that is uploaded on Github's servers. But most of the time, you aren't editing directly on Github. For cases like these, I would

• upload or paste the image on a private Discord channel (make sure the channel is used exclusively for storing images, and doesn't contain any sensitive information)
• copy the image link and put it into Markdown. The syntax for Markdown images is ![Caption](image link).

Converting from MS Word to LaTeX

I use this tool to convert Microsoft Word documents to LaTeX. I've been working on this tool for over a year, and I started working on it when I was relatively new to programming, so it might not be the cleanest thing I've ever written. It still works, and that's all that matters.

I use Pandoc and the Eisvogel LaTeX template to convert Markdown files into LaTeX.

Updating

Due to how often I update these notes, I use scripts to automate the process in one click (it takes slightly longer to update Markdown notes). I use Stackedit and Onedrive to sync my notes, so the storage of my notes do not depend on the computer I'm using.

To ensure that the way I update my notes is as stable as possible, they only update the night after each class; not directly after.