Main Area and Open Discussion > General Software Discussion
I'm thinking of going primitive, with discursion into zettelkasten
Nod5:
The boom in interest in both Roam and Obsidian, and various third-party stuff, is both good and bad. Good in that great things will probably come out of it. But bad in that things are still so much up in the air that we don't know how much these tools will change 6 months from now. So I still find it hard commit to either ATM, since which one (or other) I will prefer in the not so distant future probably depends on features not yet there or not yet refined. I'm kind of stuck in test drive mode 8)
wraith808:
The boom in interest in both Roam and Obsidian, and various third-party stuff, is both good and bad. Good in that great things will probably come out of it. But bad in that things are still so much up in the air that we don't know how much these tools will change 6 months from now. So I still find it hard commit to either ATM, since which one (or other) I will prefer in the not so distant future probably depends on features not yet there or not yet refined. I'm kind of stuck in test drive mode 8)
-Nod5 (August 13, 2020, 02:18 PM)
--- End quote ---
That's one advantage that Obsidian has over Roam; there's not much in the way of commitment since it sits on top of text files. I'm not currently using it though I maintain the same folder structure as when I did- so I can pick it back up if I desire at a later time.
Dormouse:
The boom in interest in both Roam and Obsidian, and various third-party stuff, is both good and bad ...
which one (or other) I will prefer in the not so distant future probably depends on features not yet there or not yet refined. I'm kind of stuck in test drive mode
-Nod5 (August 13, 2020, 02:18 PM)
--- End quote ---
I don't think of Obsidian as a commitment at all. I see the files as a commitment - and my system of creating and managing them. I'm happy to use other programs in addition to or instead of.
Which leaves Roam and other database programs. And there I am waiting to see. Either they offer a sufficient incentive for me to use them or they don't. I considered believing (despite never having used it) realising that the first year at least would be a write-off; I glimpsed a pot of gold but surrounded by too many red flags to take the risk.
But there's no loss. I don't have to wait where I am, I can go forward knowing I can change path in the future if I so decide.
Dormouse:
That's one advantage that Obsidian has over Roam; there's not much in the way of commitment since it sits on top of text files.
-wraith808 (August 13, 2020, 04:32 PM)
--- End quote ---
Which was my simultaneous logic exactly.
JavaJones:
That's an interesting take on the situation.
I share concerns about the professionalism of Roam's development. The offline enticement to believers through a PWA, risking data loss if cache is deleted before sync with the online database, just seemed the wrong way for the program to work.
But I hope it does well because a database has advantages that files don't - even if I prefer files for my own use.
-Dormouse (August 13, 2020, 07:33 AM)
--- End quote ---
Are the advantages you're talking about really a distinction between "files" and "databases", or are they separate? I would suggest that in fact you can probably do all or most of what Roam does with "files", or at the least by adding a database *in addition to* the files (i.e. a database that manages the files/interconnections). Which is to say I don't think Roam has any kind of monopoly technologically on the benefits it purports, and Obsidian could replicate all or most with the will and the time put into dev. Correct me if I'm wrong though.
One is that he's just substantially expanded the team; I have no experience of development teams, but in other areas it's not unusual for it to take time to become productive rather than a drain on existing resources.
-Dormouse (August 13, 2020, 07:33 AM)
--- End quote ---
Is there any evidence that he did, aside from the customer relations person I think he mentioned?
Hopefully they predicted this and had stuff like the pomodoro already up their sleeves to give an illusion of movement.
-Dormouse (August 13, 2020, 07:33 AM)
--- End quote ---
Does that really track with your knowledge of how Conor has been operating though? That he would somehow develop something in advance but not release it just so he could then release it later to make it seem like there is progress happening during an otherwise slow period? Doesn't sound like it matches with what I've seen, at any rate.
The second is that a huge number of cultists are desperate to fiddle personally with the program. Mostly, it seems to me, because they have a drive to fiddle (enhanced by lockdowns) rather than a particular need.-Dormouse (August 13, 2020, 07:33 AM)
--- End quote ---
This is true and I have no problem with them doing so, in fact I think it's great. What I was pointing out here was that the RoamMonkey features were, for the most part, *really effing useful* and *should be in the core*. In fact Roam added a new feature a mere few days after that RoamMonkey vid was released which does something similar to the Template feature. It is more powerful than RoamMonkey templates, but unsurprisingly (because it's Roam and Conor) it's *harder and slower to use*. Anyway my point is that this is not someone fiddling just to fiddle, this is a smart person (RoamMonkey author) seeing *important* things missing from Roam and spending his time *as an amateur* to develop them externally.
This keeps them attached. Other programs like Trello have benefited hugely from third party enhancement. And I notice the building excitement in Obsidian over the near-term API release.
-Dormouse (August 13, 2020, 07:33 AM)
--- End quote ---
Trello has an API, as you mention. Obsidian will also have an API. These are reasonable programs to develop for because they give you an appropriate channel to do so. Roam does not, yet. It lets you embed live-read CSS *and* javascript in its fricking pages! That's an insane risk, if I know anything about web tech security. And judging by my own experiences of massive slowdown in experimenting with CSS theming in Roam while the system tried to interpret what I was writing apparently in realtime, I think it's a crappy way to extend a system anyway. Even the RoamMonkey dev admits the fragility of some of the things he's built.
So it's great people have the enthusiasm and interest to build stuff for Roam. But I *don't* agree with Roam dev's decision to allow live interpretation of web languages within Roam DBs largely to enable this kind of hackery. I get that they probably wanted to encourage hackery and didn't want to have to wait for - or spend time on - a proper API at this stage. But I think it's irresponsible. I think there are a huge number of "cultists desperate to fiddle with Roam" because Conor is encouraging that, but I don't think he's doing so in a good way for a professional app.
Let me say one last thing which hopefully clarifies where I'm coming from. If this were a free - and especially open source - app; if this were something people could host on their own machines and expose themselves to the risks by individual choice; then I would have less concern with the "lack of professionalism" that I think Conor is exhibiting. But no, they're charging what is fairly clearly a premium for a hacky, messy system that, yes, is super cool, but also is developed largely at the whim of a potential egomaniac, and the community and his relationship to it is just feeding that. IMHO of course. ;)
I get why people are excited to be a part of it, that very messiness has some exciting aspects. But people who have lost data have a more realistic view of it, and there is the potential that more data will be lost because sloppy devs and irresponsible management lead to things like that. If that does happen, hopefully people will see that it was questionable to put that much faith into the "roam cult" and Roam and its founders, because at the end of the day people are excited about doing real work, better work, and to do that you ideally need a reliable tool. Cool, new, and exciting only get you so far.
I'll take Obsidian's humble, experienced team approach any day.
- Oshyan
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version