DaXiong wrote:

"I keep toying with the idea of converting everything to txt file and being done with the quest for the holy outliner (movie rights to follow)"

I lived like this for a few month. I did absolutely everything I could in .txt files, even if I had to shoe-horn the task into that paradigm. I highly recommend it because you learn a lot. It became clear to me why some productivity applications had some of the features that they did. You learn how to use productivity software better by spending some time with amish computing.

I have also done the same thing at different times with OneNote, Treesheets, and Mathematica. As you can imagine, l learned a lot about those applications doing so.


JasonE

ebaughjason@gmail.com
www.linkedin.com/in/jasonebaugh

Anyone else ever try amish computing?

JasonE wrote:

Anyone else ever try amish computing?

Here's my theory (which will probably be blown out of the water by this esteemed group): Anyone who started computing in the DOS ages would not be overly attracted to Amish computing, because AC would remind us too much of DOS. Then again (and now I'm blowing my own theory out of the water), perhaps we would be more likely to be attracted to AC, because it reminds us of the innocence of our youth.

Hmmm. So never mind. But to answer your question, I really haven't, though I do like to write in a plain text editor (Notetab).

Steve Z.

Earlier this year, I felt a pull toward AC for a couple of reasons:
- I wanted my data to "eternally openable" (is this even a term??? lol)
- I wanted cross-platform compatibility guaranteed (I dream of a macbook, but work/home has PC's)
- avoidance of proprietary formats

The kicker for me was that I wasn't willing to sacrifice power to achieve the above - whatever the heck that means....

After a bit of research, I decided to try out Emacs Org-mode. Wow, you talk about power, it oozes power beyond all reality. The excitement grew, and next thing I know, I'm proudly showing off my org-mode usage to co-workers, who often asked "Are you writing code these days?".

But within a month, I hit a brick wall. For all it's power, I realized that the investment made in trying to learn and memorize all the gazillions of keystroke combinations was wearing on me. I knew that there was a steep investment in learning to use it, but ended up feeling like the learning was more focused on memorizing keystrokes than leveraging information I put into it and learning the tool. Every day became a reminder that memory loss is an inevitable companion to the grey streaks near my temples.....

So despite my deeply sincere respect and admiration for what Org-mode is capable of, I am unable to live in it the way it deserves....And so we've parted ways, albeit with a tinge of sadness on my part. Perhaps the greatest potential tool in my attempt at living "Amish Computing" style was beyond my ability to use it as it deserves.....And so I returned to the eternally familial land of txt, RTF, and HMTL - three lifelong companions that don't always act like friends......

I too have a great deal of respect for Org Mode.

It is my primary word processor and working environment. It contains my scratch working files and my chronological tapes of all the text I generate.

I don't use the TODO functions and agenda. I just like it for its text management and basic outlining, and Emacs ability to have lots of text files open without choking, control windows, switch screens, etc. All mouse free.

I also tried living in Org-Mode with its GTD features and outlining, but I found that the outlining was not as flexible and powerful as BrainStorm, and that I needed to manage actions differently, not according to the GTD model. Now I keep all my actionable items in a single BrainStorm file and sort them all against each other to surface urgency and priority. This relative ranking is far more useful to me than trying to set each individual GTD attribute for an individual task in a vacuum. GTD prioritization is relative, not absolute, and this is a critical failing of the GTD methodology that can only be solved with the affordance of a rapid outliner like BrainStorm.

So I am pretty close to Amish Computing in a lot of ways... my chron tapes are all plain text, BrainStorm is 100% plaintext compatible, and then it goes into blogs and wikis, which are mostly plain text. The text must flow.

"Here?s my theory (which will probably be blown out of the water by this esteemed group): Anyone who started computing in the DOS ages would not be overly attracted to Amish computing, because AC would remind us too much of DOS. Then again (and now I?m blowing my own theory out of the water), perhaps we would be more likely to be attracted to AC, because it reminds us of the innocence of our youth."

Steve, are you suggesting there's someone on here that doesn't remember DOS? This is like the first post on the internet that makes me feel old. Everybody knows the best games are on DOS... Bill Gates' abomination just can't run the graphics. Dune II and Raptor for the win.

I admit though when I was mucking about in DOS, personal productivity was far from my mind, inventive time wasting being the first priority. I do miss the cryptic error messages... the only text-based RPG I ever played. Completely turned me off to the genre.

I do think Steve is right -- your opinions on this topic are likely to be age-related.

I started in the DOS world and yes, I live in plain text wherever possible. For example I don't think I've ever sent an HTML email, and I still get irritated when people send me HTML emails that just contain text. Don't they know that that email is 5kB in size, whereas the plain text version would have been less than 1kB? Yet that's what most people do, because it's the default setting in most email programs. All those terabtyes wasted every day.

Showing my age again. No one seems to worry about wasting bytes any more. But they should. It's just another way of saving the world's resources.

Plain text is about speed, efficiency and stability. And of course it's a universal format. But if plain text isn't the right tool for the job, I don't think twice about using something else. I just have a built-in bias towards plain text.

are you suggesting there's someone on here that doesn't remember DOS? This is like the first post on the internet that makes me feel old.

Hmm, then you probably didn't start with punched paper tape and cards, not to mention toggling in programs via front panel switches, young whippersnapper :-).

As for txt files reminding one of DOS - well, I suppose they do (and I still use them a great deal on Linux), but DOS was also the time of Tornado Notes and the first InfoSelect, MemoryMate, MaxThink, Lotus Agenda, GrandView and WordPerfect/DOS and Borland Sprint.

After a bit of
research, I decided to try out Emacs Org-mode. Wow, you talk about power, it oozes
power beyond all reality. The excitement grew, and next thing I know, I'm proudly
showing off my org-mode usage to co-workers, who often asked "Are you writing code
these days?".

Real Amish mode for me is fountain pen and notebook.
In my thinking, Org-mode and tools like the mathmatica add-on (an interesting thing to play with BTW) are the antithesis of Amish computing. I think of Amish computing as Linux, some file folders, a basic text editor, and grep. Or DOS equivalents (used to be no equivalent to grep - there is now, you could use Powershell or any of several others).


Having grown up on punch cards and then DOS, I have no particular desire to go to text - I like playing with new toys - and I play and think in multidimensional networks of thoughts, so flat text files are uninteresting...

Now if we could combine connectedtext, Personalbrain, and zoot xt together into one product then all would be well...

Well, since this is a fork from my original post, guess I should speak up.

For the record, I started using computers pre-DOS, and have never used an Apple computer. The first I owned was a Zenith 248 that I went crazy and got the 10Mb hard drive and "crammed" 1 meg or RAM into. Those were the days.

Most of what I use an outliner for is writing, not as an organizer. I have a number of part-time interests that share one common element - communicating. I give talks, teach, write short articles, give presentations, etc. So for me, Inspiration is what I use the most (although I still have a lot in TreePad). I want to love Scrivener for Windows, but ...

The simple fact is, text files work. Maybe not elegantly, and definitely not "pretty" ... but functionally they're small, fast and get the job done. Plus, as an added benefit, I'm not trapped into one program's file format. I do not try and live all in one large text file that holds everything (that would be insane, even for me). I've toyed once or twice with markdown and other markup languages, but I keep coming back to a simple text file, using Notepad++ as my editor.

The only reason I have just given up on everything else and committed to txt files (well, txt and rtf files) 100% is the program ConnectedText. Yeah, CT keeps trying to seduce me. I've got a number of projects in it, and the more I use it, the more I see it has potential. It's not quite as easy at the early stages of writing where creativity is needed, but its outliner is great, and as a writing environment its not bad.

I have the utmost respect for the regulars here - Steve's comment about remembering DOS days made me think. Most of the truly great programs I've used were DOS (Ecco being the standout exception). Has Windows hurt applications by changing the user paradigm? Maybe that's why I've gone back to text files.

The answers I got to the original question helped in this quest, and as for Amish Computing ... I've noticed the Amish focus on sustainable quality. Who wouldn't want a program that was well coded, bug-free, and did what it claimed to do ... and then stuck around so we could use it?

Anyways, those are my thoughts ....