> I'm afraid you're entirely missing the relevance of the core fact that the syntax and runtime execution of programming languages are humongously difficult to understand for the large majority of computer users.
No, I know that, I just don't think it's a relevant problem for the user group we are talking about.
> Saying that the web brought nothing new because BBSs existed before
I did not say that? And in the first place, BBS competes with other networks like the Internet, not a service running in such a network.
> The main new aspect that logseq and Obsidian bring to the table is the possibility to backlink to any part of the hierarchical structure.
No, they do not. Linking is a fundamental concept of hypertext. And easy linking inside your dataspace, as also automatically listing backlinks, was already established with wikis 20+ years ago. Even hierarchies exists in wiki space for a long time now in several different ways.
> The tools automatically compile all those links as a new data object, which the user can process without creating a script to gather all that data.
What kind of low-level-tools have you used till now that this is your level of knowledge here??
> In logseq / Obsidian, you can keep adding multimedia content to your structured knowledge base, and exploit that content without coding at all
Yes, because someone else does the coding, as always. This is the benefit of a popular ecosystem. But this is not the point of having a scriptable and programmable app. The scripting just enable you to personalize on small levels. The programmability should enable the user and community to extend the program with new abilities, as dataview here is doing it. There are other extensions who enable scripting to certain degrees for the user, as obsidian is not really adding this on it's own.
No app will ever be perfect for everyone. That's why extensions and scripting are beneficial, especially for this space.k
> What tool before these ones had that possibility before? With hierarchical structures, not just flat structures like the spreadsheet?
The constraints again. Why does it matter that obsidian&co. can do some more tricks than their ancestors, like playing videos, when the fundamental purpose and handling is still the same? That's like the old joke of taking something old and just add a clock, to sell it as new. More bells and whistle don't make a new church.
> No, I know that, I just don't think it's a relevant problem for the user group we are talking about.
What user group are you talking about? I'm specifically talking about the large majority of users who could never learn to program in a syntax-heavy general-purpose programming language! X-D Those people nevertheless have a need to build their own userland applications, and no current tool serves them well; but a Nocode programmable knowledge database could do it.
> No, they do not. Linking is a fundamental concept of hypertext. And easy linking inside your dataspace, as also automatically listing backlinks, was already established with wikis 20+ years ago.
And as I explained, no end-user tool has exploited that possibility to allow end users to access those automated links programatically with nocode tools (like for example with spreadsheet-like declarative expressions). The browser missed the chance by having no persistent storage and only allowing javascript as their programming language, and wikis never were nocode-friendly. Yet modern tools are just beginning to do that on top of a personal knowledge base.
> What kind of low-level-tools have you used till now that this is your level of knowledge here??
I beg you pardon? I've programmed all the way down from building my own flip-flops with electric transistors up to non-linear mathematical solvers for combinatorial optimization. I don't see the relevance, since low-level-tools will never be adequate development platforms for end-users.
> Yes, because someone else does the coding, as always.
No. Logseq / Obsidian have tools that allow end users to build their own coding through templates and queries. The kind of coding is different from scripting, though; it's more like creating semi-automated workflows that put all relevant information in front of the user, which then proceeds to transform it with direct manipulation. What tool in the past has allowed end-users to create that kind of workflows from end-user templates and arbitrary queries, other than non-hierarchical spreadsheets?
> The constraints again. Why does it matter that obsidian&co. can do some more tricks than their ancestors
The constraints are there for a reason, and you don't seem to grasp why they are important. The spreadsheet , and spreadsheets are typically not automated through scripting and extensions - using those is normally considered a failure of the spreadsheet model, because you're processing data outside the mental model of the spreadsheet as a programming environment i.e. cheating. Most End-User Development tools rely on the assumption that users can't program at all, so all automation concepts must be presented to them through alternate syntax and interactions, quite different from classic coding.
A spreadsheet-like development environment based on outliners as its data structure, rather than the tables of a spreadsheet, should also be programmable by end users without relying on imperative scripts external to the tool. Logseq is creating the basis for that storage model, which some people are starting to exploit the kind of semi-automated workflows I talked about above.
> like playing videos
That's a red-herring, not a main point. I mentioned multimedia merely because programmable tools tend to be text only, forcing users to use separate tools for rich content, or import specific libraries to handle multimedia data as programmable objects (rather than editing them as native interactive content like they would on the GUI). The point is that end users should be able to treat all kinds of content equally with their tools, not being tied to the Unix shell constraint that all content is moved between processes as text streams or binary blobs.
The kind of people who use such tools. The kind of people who can lookup DSLs to create dataviews, or copy&paste snippets to make up stuff. Something like a knowledge-system is not used by children or someone similar.
> Those people nevertheless have a need to build their own userland applications,
No, they do not. Not every user around the world has this demand. Most user don't have this demand. We are talking here about a minority of quite special usecases. Most people are not even able to mange their own files, and you mean they will use a complex knowledge-managment-system? People are even challenged with a simple todo-list or note-app. No way will they use something more complex.
> and no current tool serves them well; but a Nocode programmable knowledge database could do it.
No, it's not. Nocode is not magic. You still need a certain level of competence, understanding and motivation to make something with it. And whatever interface you present to the users, be it GUI or text or whatever, there always will be a certain level of complexity that not any random user can master. And this is good, we already see with apple and google what harm we have from too much simplification to cater to the uninteressted.
> No. Logseq / Obsidian have tools that allow end users to build their own coding through templates and queries. The kind of coding is different from scripting, though; it's more like creating semi-automated workflows that put all relevant information in front of the user, which then proceeds to transform it with direct manipulation. What tool in the past has allowed end-users to create that kind of workflows from end-user templates and arbitrary queries, other than non-hierarchical spreadsheets?
Many? What? This is also a kind of scripting, and there is an endless amount of tools enabling people to do that style of scripting. Starting with shellscripts, batchscripts, all the strange scripting-engines. Heck, emacs and has this style as their main purpose established. The data science-sector has a very long history of building such tools on a more professional level and integrating data-views. Wikis and databases have a long history of scripting in the knowledge managment-space. The likes of obsidian are just the next iteration, there are not fundamentally new.
> and spreadsheets are typically not automated through scripting and extensions - using those is normally considered a failure of the spreadsheet model
No, they are? What? People have build all kind of crap with VBA for a very long time. There is a reason why this garbage is still around, getting ported to everywhere. And let's not start with the plugins or how extensions for MS Office are called these days.
> using those is normally considered a failure of the spreadsheet model, because you're processing data outside the mental model of the spreadsheet as a programming environment
Maybe that's our bubbles understanding. Seems the rest of the world doesn't give much here. Limiting yourself to a model is nonsens anyway. No model is ever perfect and satisfying every user.
> That's a red-herring, not a main point. I mentioned multimedia merely because programmable tools tend to be text only, forcing users to use separate tools for rich content.
It's not like obsidian is doing more with them, just because it can play them. Until it understand them can make them accessable for the rest of the system it's remains some fancy gadget.
So, we're talking about entirely different groups of users then, there's no wonder that we're talking past each other, and that you're missing everything innovative about this new line of tools.
> No, they do not. Not every user around the world has this demand. Most user don't have this demand. We are talking here about a minority of quite special usecases. Most people are not even able to mange their own files, and you mean they will use a complex knowledge-management-system?
There I have to strongly disagree. There's a whole academic field of study, End-User Development, dedicated to prove that idea wrong. Every computer user I know is able to use spreadsheets to create their own data types tailored for their domain-specific use cases, some times quite complex ones. That they can't use scripting languages is a failure of those languages, not of users.
And yes, users are able to handle complex knowledge management systems when they're built from the ground up with the right models, instead of relying on arcane legacy metaphors from the 1960s, such as hierarchical filesystems - which are good for developers, not so much for end users. Our knowledge about digital content organization has evolved a lot since those early pioneer times.
With the proper tools, of course they'll be able to create new software artifacts, which of course they want and need - the same way they want and use new apps built by others. If they could create those themselves, why wouldn't they build their own?
> Many? What? This is also a kind of scripting, and there is an endless amount of tools enabling people to do that style of scripting.
True, but you're missing out the possibility of enabling people to create automation without any scripting at all. There aren't many tools for that other than spreadsheets, which have bad integration with the rest of the computing environment.
>Wikis and databases have a long history of scripting in the knowledge managment-space. The likes of obsidian are just the next iteration, there are not fundamentally new.
I recommend you to learn about End-User Development,[1] to see all the ways these tools can be expanded beyond classic scripting, to see what you're missing out, that other people in this thread are aware and you're not. The end-user computing landscape is going very soon to be transformed, flooded with the kind of tools that end users can build for themselves, for the very same reason that the "VBA and MS Office plugins garbage" are still around; just this time, we finally have a chance to create a way better platform for those tools, which doesn't rely on outdated plugins and low-powered scripting languages.
"Watch what I do"[2] and "Your wish is my command" [3] are the seminal works with loots of good examples. They're a bit dated, but some of their best methods have still not found their way to practical common-use tools (but modern outliners could change that very soon).
No, I know that, I just don't think it's a relevant problem for the user group we are talking about.
> Saying that the web brought nothing new because BBSs existed before
I did not say that? And in the first place, BBS competes with other networks like the Internet, not a service running in such a network.
> The main new aspect that logseq and Obsidian bring to the table is the possibility to backlink to any part of the hierarchical structure.
No, they do not. Linking is a fundamental concept of hypertext. And easy linking inside your dataspace, as also automatically listing backlinks, was already established with wikis 20+ years ago. Even hierarchies exists in wiki space for a long time now in several different ways.
> The tools automatically compile all those links as a new data object, which the user can process without creating a script to gather all that data.
What kind of low-level-tools have you used till now that this is your level of knowledge here??
> In logseq / Obsidian, you can keep adding multimedia content to your structured knowledge base, and exploit that content without coding at all
Yes, because someone else does the coding, as always. This is the benefit of a popular ecosystem. But this is not the point of having a scriptable and programmable app. The scripting just enable you to personalize on small levels. The programmability should enable the user and community to extend the program with new abilities, as dataview here is doing it. There are other extensions who enable scripting to certain degrees for the user, as obsidian is not really adding this on it's own.
No app will ever be perfect for everyone. That's why extensions and scripting are beneficial, especially for this space.k
> What tool before these ones had that possibility before? With hierarchical structures, not just flat structures like the spreadsheet?
The constraints again. Why does it matter that obsidian&co. can do some more tricks than their ancestors, like playing videos, when the fundamental purpose and handling is still the same? That's like the old joke of taking something old and just add a clock, to sell it as new. More bells and whistle don't make a new church.