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I've thought about this a fair amount and have a working app/os that shares a lot of underlying ideas with this article here are my additive thoughts: I'm buil
by fellowniusmonk 5y ago
I've thought about this a fair amount and have a working app/os that shares a lot of underlying ideas with this article here are my additive thoughts:
I'm building a ui from first principles, ostensibly in 2012 it started as an itch to scratch because I found that no note taking software met my needs, the way people used email sucked, jira et al sucked, and I couldn't wrangle non-nerds into interoperating with me on emacs.
Instead of the computer as desktop or some other abstraction I started with an interface predicated on the idea that reality itself has 3 first class citizens: Time, Space/Structure & People/Minds.
As an organizing principle applications are just metadata on data structures (_App_tributes on a node if you will) in the same way a function is a file in a directory or hosted on a cloud service. "Data first" happens when you get rid of the "container"/desktop metaphor.
First Class:
Nodes, People, Time
Second Class Enablers:
Namespaces, Fragments, Timestamped Messaging, Specialized sub-interfaces
The reason projects like chromebook try to hide or delete structure is because App based interfaces are more conducive to advertising and because people use APP as a visual reminder of "functionality". A person or org must have complete "write" control of their data if they are using a first class data/structure interface (MS Word can't have in doc advertising), apps are a weird abstraction that make it easier to sneak "ads" into your workflow.
I am nearing 80% of my time in this interface, the plan is to have a consumer friendly note taking/sharing app (the best damn cross platform note taking app) that becomes the core UI experience to replace existing OS interface in future. As an aside, I muse that the way computing evolved from TTY interfaces created strong adherence to single line CLIs and software engineers never really overcame that, and that's one of the core oversights of human interfaces in computing.
- infinitezest 5y agoThis sounds really interesting. I too haven't found a note taking app that I love. Is there a place where I can follow your progress?
- travis86 5y agoI also find this interesting. Should the data structure really the primary entity though? One can imagine the same data being organized in different data structures with different performance characteristics, functionality, etc. What if an App node wants to alter the data structure. Any other App node that is dependent on the data from a different node will then have to be rewritten. What one wants is the ability to query the data of another program and send external commands to that program to alter the data. The data structure itself is somewhat irrelevant, don't you think?
- CRConrad 5y agoKind of why everything was a text file in good old Unix?