VSCode Mastery, Set Up Your Second Brain First
Look, right now all AI is predicting a pattern. But the problem is, you should not delegate your meta-language object forming in mastering any subject via turning over that responsibility to the AI tools that are out there. What you instead should do is use vscode to implement a second brain workspace where to make notes and knowledge management about the computer language and framework you are mastering.
In this article, I am going to show you how to use the Foam plugin and some other plugins to implement the zettelkasten note-taking system in a private vscode workspace. And as a side benefit, the best way to set up vscode for awesome Markdown document authoring.
What Is Zettelkasten Note-Taking
Niklas Luhmann invented a non-digital note-taking and knowledge management system that he called zettelkasten to produce over 60 books and 600 articles on social sciences subjects. Roam Research created a commercial application implementing zettelkasten named Roam. Roam Research also created a free vscode plugin called Foam to implement zettelkasten.
A Zettelkasten note has the following characteristics:
- A unique hypertext address, usually a time-stamp title or a unique title.
- Tags are used as a mind map feature.
- An inbox note and daily notes are the less formal notes that then are transformed into formal zettelkasten notes.
What Is Foam
Foam is the Roam Research free vscode plugin that implements Zettelkasten note-taking system in a vscode workspace:
Foam
Foam Docs
Generally, you start your second brain by making a clone of the Foam template:
Now, I am going to walk through the suggested plugins and show you the better set of plugins to team up with the Foam plugin.
The Foam plugin team suggests this as the plugins to install:
There are problems with this set up, as the Foam plugin actually does in fact need the Markdown Links plugin for its mind maps feature of creating a mind map diagram based on tags:
Markdown Links
And I prefer a more powerful Markdown set of plugins than Markdown-All-In offers. And the other aspect that the Foam plugin docs does not cover is that you actually have to set markdown.preview settings for some Foam plugin features. So I am going to list my full companion plugins for my Foam setup, my Foam settings, my Kanban settings, and my other customizations.
My Companion Foam plugins are:
And my companion plugins to foam are:
Peacock
Markdown Links
Markdown Preview Enhanced
Paste Image
To-do Tree
Markdown Checkbox
Markdown Extended
Markdown YAML Preamble
Prettier
Markdown PDF
Markdown Emoji
Emojisense
Tokyo Night
Kanbn
LanguageTool
LanguageTool English
Anki
Markdown Lint
Word Count
Character Count
GitHub Markdown Preview
Markdown Preview GitHub Styling
Markdown Footnotes
Markdown Shortcuts
Markdown Image Size
https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=bierner.markdown-image-size
Markdown Mermaid
GitLens Insiders
Now, I will step through some extra steps the Foam docs does not cover.
My Foam Set Up
First, there are some direct extra foam settings you should be using:
And there are some useful extra editor settings that you should set as well:
Then my foam templates for notes are:
Atomic Note, view the raw
Article Note, view the raw
Social Note, view the raw
And I use the following vscode snippets to fill in front-matter:
Atomic Note Snippets
Article Note Snippets
Social Note Snippets
The other aspect of foam docs lacking is that we need to set the Markdown extension and Markdown Preview vscode settings:
The other part of knowledge management is a good way to organize projects. I use Kanban boards.
My Kanban Set Up
Yes, I could tag projects, but that is just not enough to manage. Instead, the kanban plugin allows one to use markdown notes with drag and drop to manage tasks for all projects. A typical settings set up is:
To power enable events in kanban board, the javascript typically is:
And then a typical board CSS settings set up is:
Next up, is my more powerful markdown settings.
My Markdown Authoring Plugins Set Up
Now, this is the 2nd part of setting up the Markdown Preview in that we need to enable settings on all the additional Markdown plugins for the preview:
Next up, is the UI customizations.
UI Customizations, Peacock and Tokyo Night
Because, I will be using this 2nd brain as another vscode instance open beyond my main project vscode instance I use some further UI customizations to make it standout using Peacock and Tokyo Night plugins:
Peacock changes the outer border colors of the vscode UI
And then the theme which is the Tokyo Night
And then the final full settings is:
Thoughts
Side note, I found a better way to manage my ADHD which requires that I take lower amounts of light stimulants and a good dose of taurine and phenylalanine(For those in the same boat, the stimulants are caffeine at 30 mg, Rhodiola-MAO-Inhibitor, and Ghost Aminos which is BCAA and EAAs.). And that translates to better organized articles and more structured social media approach.
Resources
Resources because no one has the money to go into debt for the private college CS, the private art college degrees, and the psychology degrees that are required to make the human emotional transformative software that this new human emotional world requires.
Chris Do’s Futur YouTube channels
https://www.youtube.com/@thefutur
https://www.youtube.com/@TheFuturAcademy
Resources at AIAG
https://www.aiga.org/resources
Nielsen Norman Group Articles
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/
Flutter Internals Book
https://flutter.megathink.com/
Dart VM Internals
Awesome Psychology List of Resources at GitHub provided by WeeBox
https://github.com/weeeBox/awesome-psychology
About Fred Grott
Look, I can get to the core of app design as in the psychology, coding in dart, customizing the flutter widgets, mastering flutter state management, mastering git, mastering Krita, etc. as I have had to fully rebuild and re-master all those skills after I fully got control of my ADHD through my own modified nootropics recipe for ADHD control. As I re-master all this, I am finding secrets that are not being covered that you need to know about as a Flutter App designer.
10k, 22k, 35k, 65k, 200k is the magical sequence of audience view adventure I am on as I did the research to find and develop my audience. And that is also the core thing I have to teach in Flutter App Design as if you do not have that skill you will not be employable in a long-term fashion. So I have to take all those bits and sprinkle it in each article I write on the Medium platform.
By joining medium (yes, I get a cut of that membership fee which I use to update equipment), you can unlock past the first 3 free articles and get my full stream of my articles AND exclusive to Medium members a free preview of my Flutter Design Book chapters which I am publishing on Medium as an exclusive Medium membership benefit. If, however, you currently do not have the money to invest in a Medium membership, I do post the medium free article links on these social media platforms:
YouTube https://www.youtube.com/c/FredGrott
LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/fredgrottstartupfluttermobileappdesigner/
Instagram https://www.instagram.com/fredgrott/
Twitter https://twitter.com/fredgrott
As I travel on this adventure of starting my own brand story telling studio, I will be publishing some UIKits and books at GumRoad:
And of course, I will publish free UIKits on:
GitHub https://github.com/fredgrott
Dribbble https://dribbble.com/FredGrott
