davideisinger.com/static/archive/stephango-com-hgqfrw.txt

[1]Steph Ango / [2]Writing [3]About [4]Now

File over app

July 1, 2023 · 1 minute read

File over app is a philosophy: if you want to create digital artifacts that
last, they must be files you can control, in formats that are easy to retrieve
and read. Use tools that give you this freedom.

File over app is an appeal to tool makers: accept that all software is
ephemeral, and give people ownership over their data.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

In the fullness of time, the files you create are more important than the tools
you use to create them. Apps are ephemeral, but your files have a chance to
last.

The ancient temples of Egypt contain hieroglyphs that were chiseled in stone
thousands of years ago. The ideas hieroglyphs convey are more important than
the type of chisel that was used to carve them.

The world is filled with ideas from generations past, transmitted through many
mediums, from clay tablets to manuscripts, paintings, sculptures, and
tapestries. These artifacts are objects that you can touch, hold, own, store,
preserve, and look at. To read something written on paper all you need is
eyeballs.

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. Even the
files on your hard drive use proprietary formats that make them incompatible
with older systems and other tools.

Paraphrasing something [5]I wrote recently

    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.

You should want the files you create to be durable, not only for posterity, but
also for your future self. You never know when you might want to go back to
something you created years or decades ago. Don’t lock your data into a format
you can’t retrieve.

These days I write using an app I help make called [6]Obsidian, but it’s a
delusion to think it will last forever. The app will eventually become
obsolete. It’s the plain text files I create that are designed to last. Who
knows if anyone will want to read them besides me, but future me is enough of
an audience to make it worthwhile.

Linked mentions
[7]
Photoshop for text
In the near future, transforming text over an entire document will become as
commonplace as filtering images.
[8]
Style is consistent constraint
Having a style collapses hundreds of future decisions into one, and gives you
focus.
[9]
Quality software deserves your hard‑earned cash
Quality software is like quality food from the farmer’s market. A jar of
handmade organic jam is not the same as mass-produced...
[10]
100% user-supported
If you want to build principled software, avoid becoming VCware. Stay
user-supported. It is now possible for tiny teams to build principled...
[11]
Obsidian
A private and flexible writing app that adapts to the way you think. I am
currently CEO of the company.
[12]
Obsidian Vault Template
My personal Obsidian vault template. A bottom-up approach to note-taking and
organizing things I am interested in.

You might also enjoy

  • [13]Photoshop for text
  • [14]Evergreen notes turn ideas into objects that you can manipulate
  • [15]Concise explanations accelerate progress
  • [16]In good hands
  • [17]A bicycle for the senses
  • [18]Design is compromise
  • [19]40 questions to ask yourself every year
  • [20]100% user-supported
  • [21]Pain is information

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References:

[1] https://stephango.com/
[2] https://stephango.com/
[3] https://stephango.com/about
[4] https://stephango.com/now
[5] https://obsidian.md/blog/new-obsidian-icon/
[6] https://stephango.com/obsidian
[7] https://stephango.com/photoshop-for-text
[8] https://stephango.com/style
[9] https://stephango.com/quality-software
[10] https://stephango.com/vcware
[11] https://stephango.com/obsidian
[12] https://stephango.com/vault
[13] https://stephango.com/photoshop-for-text
[14] https://stephango.com/evergreen-notes
[15] https://stephango.com/concise
[16] https://stephango.com/in-good-hands
[17] https://stephango.com/bicycle-for-the-senses
[18] https://stephango.com/design-is-compromise
[19] https://stephango.com/40-questions
[20] https://stephango.com/vcware
[21] https://stephango.com/pain
[22] https://stephango.com/subscribe
[23] https://stephango.com/feed.xml
[24] https://twitter.com/kepano
[25] https://stephango.com/subscribe
[30] https://twitter.com/kepano
[31] https://mastodon.social/@kepano