Notion is a must-have note-taking software for programmers

I found that people who have been working for a long time will gradually develop the habit of taking notes. Me too, I have used a cloud note in China for 8 years and have been a member for many years. But today I would like to recommend another note-taking software - Notion . Notion may be used less in China, but it is very popular abroad. I also saw Notion introduced by an overseas up master more than a year ago. Its rich data management forms and presentation methods amazed me at once. Many functions are really something I have been looking forward to on a cloud note for a long time, so I resolutely gave up on a domestic cloud note that I have used for 8 years.

As of today, I have been using Notion for more than a year, and it has completely taken over my work tasks, study notes, blogs, daily records, etc. Information management, it can be said that I have almost completely inseparable from it. It's gone. What is the charm of Notion that makes me rate it so highly? I summarize the following 4 points.

Page height customizable

First of all, let’s talk about the pages in Notion. The pages in traditional notes can only simply save some rich text or pictures, while various data can be inserted into the pages of Notion, such as video, audio, web pages, documents, etc. Tables, online disk content... There are also many data from third-party platforms. If it is teamwork, it can even be directly sent to people. The most important thing is that pages can also be embedded in Notion pages, which is very convenient. Before using a cloud note, I could only use the directory to manage the content. If I use Notion, I can use custom pages to manage it.

In addition, Notion also provides the function of customizing page properties. For example, a cloud note only allows you to add some tags to the page. If you add some other additional information, you can only put it in the content. Notion supports various formats of attribute information, which can be added at will, as follows:

Let's talk about the database (Database) in Notion. Notion allows you to manage pages in the form of a database. All pages in the same library will have the same page attributes.

Various forms of data display

Kanban mode, gallery mode, calendar, list, timeline The important thing is that data can be filtered, sorted, and aggregated according to the attribute value of the page.

For example, I use the Kanban mode to manage my work tasks, and divide the tasks into four categories: Todo, Doing, Done, and a long-term concern. A sub-page is a work content, and each item is a page, so no matter what you do How much information a task has can be recorded in great detail.

For another example, I use the gallery mode to record some remarks and abstracts. Because the remarks and abstracts are relatively short, the gallery mode can basically display them directly, which is very convenient to browse.

In addition, I use the calendar mode to store my meeting records, and use the table mode to record my daily life... I won't show them one by one here.

rich modules

There are a lot of built-in templates, and they are differentiated according to the crowd. There are various templates for designers, students, engineers, HR, market... and other working groups. I will not introduce them one by one here. If you are interested, you can explore by yourself. Down.

If the templates in the template library are not enough, you can also customize your own template. I personally customized my own reading note template and daily punching template. Here I will simply show my punching record this month:

Open API

Just this year, Notion provided an open API, which has been accessed by many foreign platforms. For example, using notion, you can directly check the issue and PR of github... All the existing third-party tools of Notion can be found at https://www .notion.so/integrations/all this page to see. With the open API and the popularity of Notion, it is certain that there will be more platforms accessing Notion in the future. It is a little bit expected here! Of course, as a developer, you can also consider using Api to implement some special applications.

Having said so much, I think you may be eager to replace the note-taking software you are currently using, but don't worry, there are a few issues to pay attention to first, and then it is not too late to make a decision. All of the above are the advantages of Notion. Does it have no disadvantages? Actually there is.
First of all, the biggest disadvantage is that it is a foreign software, and there are currently no domestic agents, which means that its access speed is very slow, the network reliability may be worrying, and even in case of that, your data may be It's hard to find it back.

Secondly, Notion has not done any domestic localization customization. It can be seen from the above content that it is all in English, and even the current official version does not provide a Chinese version. In addition, Notion's third-party integrations are all foreign companies, and these companies basically have little domestic business, so these are basically useless to domestic users.

For the above problems, there is actually a domestic software flowus, which cannot be said to be very similar to Notion, but to be exactly the same. Moreover, flowus is much stronger than Notion in terms of local and partial aspects. Students who have concerns about Notion’s reliability in China may wish to Consider flowus. What? You ask me if I plan to switch to flowus? To be honest, I am still waiting and watching. First of all, because I have accumulated too much data on Notion, the migration cost is very high. Secondly, flowus feels that it is still in the early stage of development, and the PC version of the client has not been launched. I can't accept this at the moment, so I will wait and see.

That's all for today's article. If you find it useful, please like it, and if you like it, please follow it. What note-taking software do you currently use? You can leave a comment below.