I think the concept of developer journals is a good one. Done well it can be one of the best learning tools we have available to us. I've already learned things from some of the journals here. For example, I'm now using XMind to map my ideas and project task. I didn't know XMind existed until I read about it in a developer journal here.

However, like many of us, I work full time as a programmer, I have a family to care for, a dog to walk, meals to help make, and a 2nd job to help make ends meet. I'm up every day at 4:30 am to go to my first job and occasionally I'm not home until 8pm from my 2nd job. (at least that's only one night a week). The time I spend writing [secret awesome game idea] is so special that I really have to schedule that time if it's going to happen at all.

This brings up a "best use of time" discussion. As I'm writing [secret awesome game idea] I'm learning a lot. I'd like to think that what I've learned can be helpful to others in this community. But every minute I would spend writing a Developer Journal takes time away from the rare, few, and special moments I have available for writing [secret awesome game idea].

So tell me. What level of detail would you like to see in a developer journal? Is takling about planning and brainstorming enough? Or do you want to get into details like how to generically map keystrokes to actions in a way that the key listener is completly seperate from the implementation and can be easily remapped for every level?

Or, as happens so often with game developers, is the idea of writing [secret awesome game idea] and also doing a developer journal simply biting off too much at one time? We all tend to have grand ideas which are tempered by the reality of time constraints. Perhaps writing a journal is simpley a case of "Good idea, but not efficient at this time."

I'm looking forward to hearing yoru thoughts.

I'm not sure if this thread should've been moved to the Suggestions group from the Lounge. The OP is asking for the public's opinion rather than trying to communicate to staff what he'd like to see.

I begin reading journal entries from the Developer Journals List page. To be honest, what gets me to view a journal is a combination of the title and the profile picture. If either one catches my eye, the journal posting is more likely to be read. I think subconsciously the profile picture gives me a preconception about the writer's personality and sets in my mind a feeling of whether or not I want to hear from this person. The title creates (or rather it has an opportunity to create) a much more valid impression of the journal entry's content. A title that catches my eye will be one that fits with my interests and the particular mood that I happen to be in. The title tends to tell me instantly that I can expect the journal entry to generally fit into one of a few categories:

• First journal entry.
  
• Apology for not posting more frequently or personal life entry.
  
• Library or language specific entry for a specific feature or algorithm.
  
• Game engine design entry.
  
• Game play element design entry.
  
• General project update entry.
  
  (Of course, that list is just a general break down of how I think I've seen journal entries fit into.)
  
  The journals that appeal to me day to day are the ones that tell me about the decisions made on a project. The kind of thing that says how the developer had a particular game element in mind, maybe a bit about the technical challenges of getting it in, the impact that it had on the over all game, and how it is going to influence decisions down the road. And of course a screenshot or two is always nice where it has something new to show. Personally I'm not as big on videos most of the time.
  
  Project update journal entries that simply list off a number of features that have been added to a game don't really do much for me though. I don't want a build report, I want to know about the interesting things that happened getting to that build. Oh, and pretty much anytime I see a giant wall of text that looks like someone copy & pasted their design doc, I slowly back away.
  
  I also like articles that describe how I can add a particular feature to my game too, so long as it doesn't get too far above the technical level that I like to work at. Code samples for this sort of thing are of course nice to see. However this type of article doesn't catch my attention as frequently as others unless I'm aware that the feature is something that I may want to be considering for a current or future project. It is especially likely to be passed over if the title makes it sound like it's at a technical level that I don't work at.
  
  I do make a point of reading a number of the "First Entry" posts. When I do it's in the hopes that it'll talk about beginning some project that sounds interesting or otherwise have something really fresh to show. Usually these entries end up being a person's short introductions saying they're not sure what to write yet.
  
  My journal posts lately have generally been project updates. I try for a bit of the "how did I get there" thing but I'm not sure if I express it the way I'd like. As I develop I keep a lot of notes which describe in detail how I went from one thing to another. At first I thought about posting those notes in their entirety to the journals here but there's a lot of rambling in them which might not be so interesting. It just happens that those notes are a by-product of the work that I do which makes them convenient to make available. I decided to try to go for journal entries that summarize things a bit more and point to those notes if someone might be interested in digging further. I don't want readers to be so bored that by the time I say "check this link to see what I have", they have long since closed the page. But I don't really know how successful I am at all that. I see a little extra activity on my website when I have a new blog entry compared to when I don't but it's not much and I'm never sure how much is essentially background noise.
  
  Sorry for the long answer, I hope it all went in the right direction.

I'm going to move this to The Lounge, as I think it probably fits better (and should get more responses) there given you're looking for feedback from other users rather than asking a question or making a suggestion about the features a journal offers.

is the idea of writing [secret awesome game idea] and also doing a developer journal simply biting off too much at one time?

I think this depends on the individual.

For some, writing journal entries is a welcome break from development.
Others might consider writing a journal entry (and building interest in their game) to be part of the process.
Some developers post because they're stuck or unsure of how to proceed and want to get feedback.
Some aren't actually creating a game, but might still have things to share.
For some developers, creating a game and writing journal entries is too much work, in which case they would be better off not spending time on it.

Is there value for you personally in writing down and sharing your thoughts?

Here's what I'm interested in:

• Cool tools that you find useful. Explain, in two sentences, why it's useful.
  
• Short and sweet descriptions about what you are doing, but not two short. (Two or three paragraphs is fine. My own journal posts tend to be too wordy for my own tastes)
  
• Cool programming tricks, or tutorials / articles on some programming thingy. Be as wordy as you need to be, to help the readers understand what you are talking about.
  
• Screenshots of your game. I don't care if it looks like junk, as long as it's interesting looking junk (no blank windows or single triangles onscreen).
  
• Samples of art/music/writing for your game.
  
  
  I try to post once a week; it usually ends up being once every 2 to 4 weeks, but during active development, can increase to twice a week. I do not post every day, nor do I want to read a journal that [s]spams[/s] *cough* posts every day or even every other day. Once a week is perfect for my reading, and for my posting. It works well, because then I can just follow the Weekly Roundup without missing anything important.

>Is there value for you personally in writing down and sharing your thoughts?

That is a profound insight. Seriously, I think that's what it all comes down to.

I enjoy teaching. I enjoy sharing what I learn. In fact, my 2nd job is as a music teacher so I think sharing what I've learned is a satifying thing for me to do.

One of the first things I learned by reading articles on this site is how common it is for game developers to think too big, to have grands ideas which are just too grand to actually accomplish. You see this whenever there's a question like "I have a great idea for an MMORPG. What language shoudl I learn?" I always think "Dude, it you don't know a computer language yet then you're nowhere near working on an MMORPG. You're probably 5 to 10 years and several million dollars away."

An article here on GameDev makes that same point and suggest writing Pong first. Coincidentally enough, that's pretty much how my first project started. But I started thinking :What if I'm not the paddle, I'm the ball? And what if I'm not a ball, but a planet? And what if I'm trying to capture asteroids of my color and avoiding asteroids of a different color? And what if a 2nd player had another planet of a different color and he was trying to do the same thing?

That concept started the idea of Planet Ball


What I just posted may be enough for a developer journal entry. From the comments I'm seeing here that perhaps that is enough for a single dev journal entry. Maybe, as is often the case, my idea of what goes into a developer's journal was also a bit "too grand too soon" and simple explainations are enough.

Good comments all around. I'm enjoying the discussion.

I keep a developer journal but I write it in notepad++ and don't ever publish it. Most frequently, I write myself a note on where I left off in the project so that I can quickly pick it up later. Sometimes I use it to bitch and gripe about something (it's an outlet). Other times I use it to describe a problem I'm trying to solve and...the solution becomes apparent. Other times, it's useful as a historical reference to see how much I've learned and matured. You *might* be able to justify maintaining a developer journal as a productivity boosting tool, but I think the productivity value would follow the agile paradigm of "Just barely good enough".

Occassionally, I'm tempted to buy a domain name and setup a website to host white papers, tutorials and videos...but then the workload involved dissuades me.

Maybe I'm alone in this, but I would love a 'snippets of text of project updates' that are tracked through your GDnet account and through RSS. I find there's a whole bunch of developers I'm following on GDnet, but I don't have time to read their entire developer blogs. Having a simple slim update feed would be nice. I could be following 5 different developers and just get simple updates like:

"Just added sound to the game. Still looks rubbish but now it goes pew pew!".
" New version is up - Download it www.mygame.com/v5".

It would fill the void where I'm not always going to read whole blog posts, but I do want to keep up with their development status.

Ok, yes, it would more or less be a twitter for GDnet, but it would have the one thing twitter doesn't have - Interesting content.

my 2c.

Ok, yes, it would more or less be a twitter for GDnet, but it would have the one thing twitter doesn't have - Interesting content.

Content is a function of the users, not the providers. You're just not following the right people on twitter. ;)

"Just added sound to the game. Still looks rubbish but now it goes pew pew!".
" New version is up - Download it www.mygame.com/v5".

It would fill the void where I'm not always going to read whole blog posts, but I do want to keep up with their development status.

Ok, yes, it would more or less be a twitter for GDnet, but it would have the one thing twitter doesn't have - Interesting content.

I agree - that would be awesome.

Sounds like the User Profile status. Apparently, if you have 'Contacts', you can consolidate all their updates in one page.
So it's more like, the software is there, but how will it be used?

If someone creates a GD.net network/circle of developer contacts, I'd join and update my status feeds with a twice-daily micro project update.

If GD.net adds "Project status" feeds alongside "Profile status" feeds, that'd just be superb.