Thread by @TfTHacker

1/ Today I highlight THREE factors that make this old RoamHacker, now TfTHacker, more confident about @obsdmd future.

Three factors that show a bright future for the “Shiny tool” called Obsidian:

- Community

- WYSIWYG

- Plugins development

2/ COMMUNITY: what is community? Simple, it is a place where you can give and get help, feel welcome and enjoy the experience.

Almost 3 months ago I tweeted on the Obsidian Community and I can only say it is all still 100% valid.

Come for the tool, stay for the community.

https://twitter.com/TfTHacker/status/1390928424672370689

3/ WYSIWYG - a big issue for some new users to Obsidian is working with text Markdown documents and the preview mode.

This problem will be solved in the near future. Work is under way to bring WYSIWYG editing experience to Obsidian.

This will reduce the entry barrier for some.

4/ Plugin Development - don’t forget I am the Tools for Thought hacker. As with Roam42, I am interested in tools that streamline & improve workflows and thinking processes. (Examples: SmartBlocks for standardizing workflows, workBench for graph wide editing with no context loss)

5/ As I did with Roam, I held off a few months to master the tool before looking to extend it. I have now started some work on plugins (Obsidian42???? :-) probably not).

And the dev experience is amazing, especially coming from the poorly documented, do-it-yourself roam world.

6/ WARNING: Sorry in advanced for the nerdiness. Some of you will probably check out here. Thanks for coming.

What makes development so great in Obsidian? Ohhhhh let me count the ways.

7/ First its using TypeScript (basically Javascript) as its coding language. TypeScript is one the most popular development languages. TypeScript is also easy to learn. So Obsidian uses a popular, well supported language.

8/ second, Obsidian offers something called a type definition file. This is a file that exposes all its internal services to you in a structured way. So as a new developer, I don’t have to dig and guess how to code against Obsidian, this definition file explains all that I need.

9/ Third, The plugin architecture is very well thought out. They are easy to develop. They provide many reusable services, so the developer doesn’t get bogged down with common tasks, rather focuses on the unique problem they want to solve. Basically focus on providing value.

10/ Fourth - most plugins are open source, and there are over 200 of them. So you have lots of good open source examples to learn from. As I have been coding, I have been able to find solutions by learning from others code.

11/ Fifth - On the Obsidian Discord server they have a channel dedicated to plugin developers. I have been posting questions, & getting solutions. Also the main developer of Obsidian has brainstormed strategies with me on the forum. This is the kind of service I would pay for

12/ So I highly recommend you give obsidian a try. It isn’t for everyone, but it has a very promising future in the TfT space. It is the underdog, easily underestimated, but it shouldn’t be. I don’t take these things lightly, and wouldn’t recommend it.

13/ If you give Obsidian a try, you need to stick with it for a few months like I do. I needed to adapt my workflows to the obsidian feature set. I had to re-train muscle memory for some tasks.

But it paid off after a few months and I believe it will for you.