File over App Philosophy

starman@programming.dev to Programming@programming.dev – 45 points – File over app
stephango.com

I personally wouldn't recommend obsidian (mentioned at the end of the article), but still, I think the article is worth reading.

8

"Philosophy" seems a bit grand for something that could be better described as a "tip".

No it really is a philosophy.

There's a vast difference in approach between software that uses documents and software that uses a database. A document based approach tends to result in work that lasts a long time. A database approach tends to have more features.

It's tempting to chase those features, but in my opinion it's a mistake.

A database approach tends to have more features.

Document based solutions can have as many feature as the developer wants, the thing is that it's harder to build document-based solutions than DB ones.

This is an advertisement for a commercial editor. The blog author is the CEO of said product.

If you want your writing to still be readable on a computer from the 2060s or 2160s, it’s important that your notes can be read on a computer from the 1960s.

Was that blog post stored on punched cards just in case? I’m nowhere near pretentious enough to waste effort on making whatever I’m doing readable in a century, whatever method that may be. Nobody knows what computing will look like in one hundred years. Trying to solve problems that don’t have any guarantee of ever existing is bad practice.

Today, we are creating innumerable digital artifacts, but most of these artifacts are out of our control. They are stored on servers, in databases, gated behind an internet connection, and login to a cloud service.

Personal devices die at least as fast as the servers making up the cloud. Someone’s iPhone is not a place to store stuff for posterity.

These days I write using [yaddi-yadda] It’s the plain text files I create that are designed to last.

Plain text might be great for a writing app, but it’s not doing anything for video, graphics or audio.

Author should take their own cue and stick to chiselled stone tablet given the obvious importance of their work for the future of humanity.

I prefer plaintext writing for a couple reasons:

  • Plaintext is readable everywhere and by anyone. It's effortless to make an app that views it in different ways or a tool handles it in any way you want (like searching, organization, etc). I don't have to stick to whatever Microsoft decided as rich format.
  • the baseline IS plain text. I should ask myself, what does this other rich format offer me? Some use cases are justified. But otherwise, you're adding obscurity for no reason.