I just published a video about a Reddit post in which an Obsidian user asks about Emacs: pros and cons, and “aha” moments.
I’m not big on software supremacy type arguments. Whatever tool you decide to use is the best tool for you. I don’t see the point in forever touting one tool over another.
However, I don’t want to downplay the philosophical side of the argument. People who spend time carefully plotting out software choices are no different than laborers in any other field who want to pick the best tool for whatever job they’re doing.
For whatever reason (and I would be curious to get reader comments on this), users of open source tools tend to be more philosophical, I’ve noticed, than users of Windows or Mac products. What I mean by that is, FOSS users tend to value choice, and with that choice there is a greater assumption that you can make wise choices and unwise choices.
Quick example. A Mac user who needs to do some design work has no choice: they have to shell out for a Photoshop license. (They could consider using something like GIMP, but for most users that option would be too beyond the pale, and they might fear the difficulty of integrating a non-standard open source tool within their existing workflow.)
On the other hand, someone who has grown accustomed to open source tools takes on a whole different set of questions. “Can I use GIMP for my project? Of course, but do I need to use it? Couldn’t I just assemble my graphical items into a script and pipe it into ffmpeg? What is the best tool for this particular job? What is my ideal result? Should I favor speed or accuracy? Or both?”
Anyway… back to the Obsidian question.
Obsidian is a fine tool. If anyone is purely interested in taking notes and does not use Emacs already, I’d recommend just sticking with Obsidian. It does exactly what you need it to do.
However, if you’re using Emacs already, and you’re comfortable with the interface, I couldn’t think of a good reason to use Obsidian, unless you want to show off a cool hyperlinked graph of your notes and tags.
A few of the other points I mentioned in the video:
- Emacs provides a superior writing environment.
- You can code your own note system with Emacs lisp.
- Emacs’s longevity makes it a safer choice for long term projects.
Whatever tool you decide to use, it’s always best to first take a step back and decide what your ideal outcome would be. Then you can more quickly sample different tools and get an idea of which one will work best for you.
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