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My productivity app is a never-ending .txt file (2020)

(jeffhuang.com)
247 points simonebrunozzi | 9 comments | 11 Dec 25 19:30 UTC | HN request time: 0.683s | source | bottom
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analogpixel ◴[11 Dec 25 22:00 UTC] No.46237814[source]▶
I've been noticing lately, at least for myself, that useful technology stopped happening like 10-20 years ago. If all you could use was tech from 2000 and before you would have a pretty stable stack that just worked (without a monthly subscription.)

There is also this article today: https://jon.recoil.org/blog/2025/12/an-svg-is-all-you-need.h... about how great good ol' svg is. And then every recurring article about using RSS instead of all the other siloed products.

textfiles, makefiles, perl, php, rss, text based email, news groups, irc, icq, vim/emacs, sed, awk; all better than the crap they have spawned that is supposed to be "better".

Out of curiosity, what technology in the past 5 years do you use that you actually find better than something from 20 years ago?

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1. Mongoose ◴[11 Dec 25 22:06 UTC] No.46237898[source]▶
I'd say Obsidian (just over five years old, since its first release), which is ironic because it's basically just a UI on top of text files.
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2. analogpixel ◴[11 Dec 25 22:09 UTC] No.46237935[source]▶
I'd definitely agree with you on that one. Also notice how the company doesn't push monthly subscriptions on people and just lets their program exist out there.
3. snowfield ◴[11 Dec 25 22:38 UTC] No.46238308[source]▶
But it's not, it's a database. That is annoyingøy hard to move around and version control
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4. Obscurity4340 ◴[11 Dec 25 23:45 UTC] No.46238979[source]▶
Logseq for me. Its just so powerful, the infinite nesting and draggable indents and zooming
5. antiframe ◴[12 Dec 25 00:58 UTC] No.46239623[source]▶
I don't think it's better than org-mode, but org-mode is also post-2000 so doesn't count here. Obsidian isn't open source, isn't plain text enough, and is slow.

Markdown also falls outside the pre-2000 window as well. But, it's closely based on email and news conventions.

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6. incanus77 ◴[12 Dec 25 01:20 UTC] No.46239756[source]▶
I backup my Obsidian vault weekly by blindly committing the stuff in `.obsidian` and then reviewing the changes to the `.md` files themselves. It's not version control, per se, but at least a backup and record.
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7. Zambyte ◴[12 Dec 25 03:37 UTC] No.46240613[source]▶
What do you mean by "isn't plain text enough"? I haven't used it, but the only thing I imagine would be indexing with a database, but you can just use plain text tools like grep (or rg) to fill the gaps.
8. physicles ◴[12 Dec 25 05:27 UTC] No.46241144{3}[source]▶
Yep, I have a cron that does git add . && git commit -m “daily commit”. Haven’t touched it in a couple years.
9. PurpleRamen ◴[12 Dec 25 10:21 UTC] No.46242692[source]▶
> I don't think it's better than org-mode

In theory, it's significant better than org-mode, because Electron has much more abilities than Emacs. In reality, it's a matter of taste and personal requirements. Obsidian is customizable, so you make it do whatever you want, and there are many addons available; but org-mode has also a very specific focus on the type of addons being available and builtin stuff it has, were Obsidian is more lacking I would say.

> Obsidian isn't open source, isn't plain text enough, and is slow.

It's very fast for what it offers. And "plain text enough" is again a matter of taste. It's all plaintext, but delivering a useful and very powerful interface on top of it. The kind of area where Emacs is lacking.