Thread by @RobertHaisfield

I’m learning how to use Clojure, and in particular the Specter library, to manipulate my old Roam notes export. Still early in my exploration, but something feels badass about literally using a programming language to write notes and the REPL as my client.

Specter is going to let me navigate, query, and transform my notes (I might need to restructure them first). Along the way, I hope to write a domain-specific language for Rob’s thinking. Theoretically, the code could be run anywhere I can use Clojure, so it’s portable.

An interesting realization while playing around with IntelliJ Cursive (Clojure IDE): you can find the definition of a function and all of its instances, which is analogous to the contents of the page and backlinks

The idea of using an IDE and the REPL as my “app” feels powerful

One worry would be that by using a programming language, I’d end up having to write too much extra stuff instead of just getting my thoughts down. I’d have to be careful to use high level abstractions that don’t require a ton of arguments, or have smart defaults with no args

Part of the motivation for this is to just give me a project I can get excited about to learn to code. It probably won’t be anything super impressive, but I’d really like to be able to do more with my Roam notes outside of Roam. robhaisfield.com/notes/the-most…

The problem is that if you used the daily notes and indentation heavily in Roam, then the exports are actually really hard to work with. There’s way too much information about too many different subjects on any daily page, so search results end up with a lot of false positives

https://twitter.com/roberthaisfield/status/1375852992776134663

Also working with @jamest_lu on a query tool for replicating roam queries on a directory of markdown files. The way indentation can convey structure is really clever, and it’s a bummer that sort of querying doesn’t appear elsewhere. This will also make the exports more useful.

https://twitter.com/roberthaisfield/status/1380524410361192451