Many years ago, friends of ours gave us a cookbook.

I love cookbooks. I love to cook, but I tend to be fairly recipe bound. I might experiment a bit but I love following great recipes from authors I trust.

Anyway, this cookbook was special.

Our friends had taken the time to write all over the cookbook. They copied in notes that they'd made. Some notes were commentaries on the finished product.

"We really liked this one."

"Good, but not worth the effort."

Other comments noted adjustments they'd made to the recipes.

"Used walnuts instead."

"Added 1 t basil."

"Cut the oil in half."

Such a gift.

Ever since then, I annotate recipes in books I cook from. There's a recipe for a sort of cream of mushroom soup that I like from James Peterson that works perfectly without any of the cream. His technique is so good we never miss the flavor or the mouth feel.

I've recently been thinking about this in my own writing.

I hope people annotate my books the same way.

Not everything I write in my coding books will be to your taste. Perhaps, you might leave yourself notes.

"I'd use a computed property here instead of a method."

"No need for so many levels of indirection."

"inout needs to move to decorate the type now."

I don't do this with technical books and articles. I wonder why not.

It's so helpful with cooking recipes.

We should annotate coding recipes.