In a previous post, I introduced GistPad, a new VS Code extension that provides an in-editor scratchpad/code snippet manager, built on top of GitHub Gists. However, after releasing the extension, and talking with many developers, I learned that there was another interesting use case for Gists, that could benefit from further optimization: documentation/mini-blogging. Since Gists are persisted, tied to your GitHub identity, and easy to create, they represent a great solution for maintaining your personal "knowledge base" and sharing it with your team/colleagues/friends 📚

In order to reduce context switches, and allow you to easily document/retain valuable information as you acquire it, GistPad now allows you to create micro-blog posts directly from VS Code, and stored as GitHub Gists. Since VS Code is a world-class markdown editor, this provides you with an awesome authoring experience, that is easy and familiar to use. Finally, by means of an integration with GistLog, your micro-posts are easily shareable with others, thanks to a beautiful web publishing experience and support for RSS subscription 🚀 Check out what this looks like in the following gif:

Jonathan Carter

@lostintangent

Thanks to the awesome folks at Tighten (tighten.co) you can now use GistPad (aka.ms/gistpad) to author and publish code-centric, Gist-based blog posts (aka a "GistLog"). Share your thoughts, code snippets, and learnings with the world, directly from @code 🚀

00:13 AM - 15 Dec 2019

I'm excited to see how this can be used as a middle ground between tweeting and blogging, where the information you want to share/retain is more than a quick thought, but not quite an entire post. Additionally, since GistPad allows you to easily migrate local files/snippets to Gists, this makes it really easy to write content that is centered around what matters most: code. If this experience looks at all interesting and/or you get a chance to check out GistPad, please let me know what you think and any feedback you may have. I want this extension to be by and for the community 🙌🏻

For more details, check out the documentation for GistPad's micro-blogging support here.