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I've been very very skeptical about Roam - I appreciate the sentiment behind it and the fact that it's making more people aware of networked thought but the marketing around it has been insane. Especially investor Twitter is raving about it for many weeks now about how the tool is a savior. It's almost as if they're doing it to increase user count to Roam to justify their investment, which is likely.
It often misses the point here - the idea of networked thought and note-taking is the key here. If you have the time and means to do it, you can always do so using something as simple as text files too.
Something that's as critical as a note-taking tool, the first rule of thumb should be - don't lose data! Agreed, it was the readwise integration that messed things up here but the snapshotted database approach has its own perils in the long run too. For the most part, one does not need constant sync-ups. And Roam doesn't even have a mobile app today - which means that most likely folks are just using their laptops to add notes.
If you're just starting out, I'd recommend using [Obsidian][
] or if you have a little bit more time, explore the world of emacs via [org-mode][
].
Roam might be a success or might not be :shrug:. Use something that works for you and your workflow. Don't engage in productivity porn and lose many hours.
I was very positive on Roam early on. I actually signed up for the Believer plan. I've since switched to Obsidian though. I was finding that Roam became very slow and laggy once documents started to get pretty long. It started to hinder my note taking rather than help. One simple example was how the cursor doesn't focus when jumping to a new document. That always really bugged me and despite bringing it up it was never fixed. They seemed to prioritize other things like Pomodoro timer for some reason.
Maybe these things are fixed now and maybe I'll try it out again one day but Obsidian has been great for me. My files are local so it's fast. I also have them backed up via Dropbox and because of that I can view/edit on my phone.
Previously I used Atom for my note taking so this is very similar but now I have the additional benefits of linked documents and attachments and templates and so on.
I agree about text files, and avoid markdown myself.
I've started writing my own system, which can also double as forum, groupware, or blog, and it's all based around textfiles.
I try to architect in such a way that, even armed with just `cat`, I could still read my notes.
> Especially investor Twitter is raving about it for many weeks now about how the tool is a ..
I see this a lot. Especially on Youtube and twitter. productivity geeks rave about how xyz app changed their life, how they have squeezed out every productive minute out of their life just because they used the xzy app. Notion, Roam, Todoist, etc.
> If you're just starting out, I'd recommend using [Obsidian][
]
even I use obsidian, mostly due to it being an offline app and having a good interface.
How productive it is to talk about how productive you have been on twitter?
Is there a standardized productivity test?
welp, _i_ recognized that syntax immediately!
My "data loss recovery" scenario begins and ends with "git clone".
Roam is the app I love to hate. I love it, but I really wish a competitor was built with a focus purely on speed, security, and reliability (plus the roam innovative linked references and tagging). I suspect a large % of users are over served by all the intricate features and many just want something basic with bi directional links that’s fast, secure and reliable, which is exactly the disruption-ripe scenario Christensen describes.
Every time I use roam I have a slight fear in the back of my head it’s going to lose some of my notes or have a data breach.
has served me very well. It's not open-source but the community on discord and the forums has been amazing and folks are very responsive to feature requests.
If you need something mature, [tiddlywiki](
https://lesser.occult.institute/an-opinionated-approach-to-t...
). If you're open to something real new (and like that shiny interface), [Logseq looks really good](
https://github.com/logseq/logseq
)
Maybe keep your eye on Athens, an open source Roam clone:
https://github.com/athensresearch/athens
Importantly for us, Roam differs from other webapps in that it doesn't store all state and history in its backend. Instead, Roam's backend just stores a snapshotted Datascript database (updated ~daily as far as I can tell) and the list of transactions since that last snapshot.
If I'm reading this right...
A) OP was hosed if they didn't finish this within ~24 hours. That's fun.
B) I now know why Roam takes a long time to load -- it's replaying every edit I made since its last snapshot!
Edit:
When a message is more than 16KB, it's split into multiple messages without wrapping - so we'll need to stitch these bigger messages together. One way to detect a non-split-message is to just try and parse it as JSON - if it's valid, we can say it's non-split. (There's an edge case we're unlikely to hit here: if the 16KB chunk just so happens to be valid JSON as well we'll be out of luck. Lucky for us, I didn't run into this!)
This is an extremely inconsequential detail to focus on, but I don't see the edge here at all. What's an example 16KB string that OP's method would actually fail to parse? (Maybe I'm failing to grok what "without wrapping" means here.)
Isn't it impossible for the 16kb partial to be valid json? Json starts in either a curly or square brace -- valid json more than 16kb would never close the outermost brace in the first 16kb of data, otherwise it would be invalid