Note Taking

Indeed Roam is very much inspired by a niche programming language called Clojure. Furthermore, it's built with it. It's a flexible, small syntax language imparting a plasticine feeling. One can achieve many things using a small amount of building blocks. Much like Roam.

Humans are bad at coming up with search queries. Humans are good at incrementally narrowing down options with a series of filters, and pointing where they want to go next. This seems obvious, but we keep building interfaces for finding information that look more like Google Search and less like a map.

All information tools have to give users some wa... See more

The actual measures of productivity that might be useful range quite a bit:

• I did enough to not get fired.


• I did enough to get promoted.


• I did enough to get hired by a better firm.


• I solved a problem for a customer who was frustrated.


• I changed the system and now my peers are far more productive.


• I invented something that creates new possibilities and ne

... See more

I continue to journal most days, and occasionally find myself working to refine one concept or another among those notes.

But the original promise of Roam — that it would improve my thinking by helping me to build a knowledge base and discover new ideas — fizzled completely.

The most natural implementation of any feature request is additive, attempting to leave all other elements of the design in place and simply inserting one new component: a new button in a UI or a new parameter to a function. As this process is repeated, the simplicity of a system is lost and complexity takes its place. This pattern is often particu... See more