Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by klum 877 days ago
Agreed on the power-user stuff and the courses. I use Obsidian in a simple way, but it's nice that the extensibility and the community is there.

Unlike VS Code, Obsidian is (for me) an actual example of an Electron app that feels fast. The quick open/command palette features are more responsive than similar features in native Mac apps I've tried.

As mentioned elsewhere, users frequently ask for Obsidian to be open source, but the fully transferrable file format is enough for me. I don't think most of those drive-by open-source commenters have thought about the work that goes into running an open-source project.

In other words, on some theoretical plane I'd like Obsidian to be an open-source native app, but in reality those things haven't bothered me at all. The app is as simple as I want it to be, as complex as I need it to be, and it's regularly improved in a thoughtful way.
4 comments
Ballas 876 days ago
> Unlike VS Code, Obsidian is (for me) an actual example of an Electron app that feels fast. The quick open/command palette features are more responsive than similar features in native Mac apps I've tried.

VS Code feels fast to me (on linux), but perhaps I'm just slow. I remember when VS Code came out, I was surprised at how responsive it felt, compared to Atom which felt like typing with a molasses membrane keyboard.

Actually, I realize now that I'm using Codium with lots of things disabled that made it less responsive to me (like code completion), so I'm probably an outlier.

link
georgejfrick 877 days ago
You can paste images now as of the latest version; it was driving me crazy as well. Even in older versions you can drag an image in but that was an extra step.
link
behnamoh 877 days ago
> Unlike VS Code, Obsidian is (for me) an actual example of an Electron app that feels fast. The quick open/command palette features are more responsive than similar features in native Mac apps I've tried.

Dude, VSCode is a freaking IDE, running all sorts of processes in the background (at least one terminal, language servers, type checkers, linters and formatters, possibly extensions, etc.) whereas Obsidian is just a text editor.

link
viraptor 876 days ago
> running all sorts of processes in the background (at least one terminal, language servers, type checkers, linters and formatters, possibly extensions, etc.)

That's a terrible excuse.

Your terminal is a separate process and should not affect how the editor itself feels. The language server exists out of process. The linters / type checkers exist out of process. (Or at least shouldn't block the main interaction/GUI thread) If those things make editing slow, either the design or the implementation is bad.

Sublime text runs the same stuff for me and works much faster than vscode. No excuses.

link
behnamoh 876 days ago
> Sublime text runs the same stuff for me and works much faster than vscode. No excuses.

Okay but this discussion is about electron apps. Sublime isn't.

link
viraptor 876 days ago
This is an example for context. We've got 3 cases: Obsidian (non-ide/electron/fast), vscode (ide/electron/slow-ish), sublime (ide/non-electron/fast). My point was that neither the electron not the ide part is an excuse for vscode not being responsive, because we've got counterexamples for each.
link
klum 877 days ago
Not arguing with that. In discussions about Electron, there are often comments along the lines of "Electron apps can be fast if done right, just look at VS Code" and that just doesn't hold true for me.
link
rubslopes 877 days ago
> users frequently ask for Obsidian to be open source, but the fully transferrable file format is enough for me.

Completely agree. Not everything needs to be open-sourced. If I'm looking for a framework/library to build something upon, sure, I'll prioritize open-source. But -- and this may be a hot take -- for a consumer-oriented software, sometimes a great vision trumps community development.

link