What this story and many of the comments herein miss is that org-mode coupled with org-babel is a full-fledged multilanguage literate programming environment. When you have access to the shell, Python (w/ matplotlib for graphs), Clojure, R, etc. right in your org buffer, and can interact between them (and even pass data between cells of different languages), you really do have what Ken Iverson (inventor of APL, Turing award winner) called a “Tool for thought”. This prose first style of programming where text is punctuated by code (instead of the other way around) is excellent for your own thought process, exposition (via Latex, MD, HTML, text export) as well as taking notes. The only downside to org is that it is intimately tied to emacs, so if you don’t like emacs (lisp) you won’t want to use org. And one more thing, the hierarchical folding in org is second to none. That should be a simple matter, but no other environment/editor handles that feature like org.
Emac’s Org Mode will improve your software engineering
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Re: Emac’s Org Mode will improve your software engineering
#72Others here have described really well the defects in most products for information managers, knowledge managers, note-takers, etc etc. I created OneModel (http://onemodel.org), as an org-mode alternative. (Really, an everything-else alternative.) Free (AGPL), and contributors welcome. Especially feedback! It has many advantages over emacs org-mode (details in the FAQs, but e.g. the speed of navigation, ease of learning, and flexibility).
Vision, in buzzwords: outlines + mind mapping + evernote + wikipedia + knowledge management + spreadsheets/apps + PIM, you decide what to share or import. It lets you organize arbitrary knowledge in a structure that makes sense to you, based on how you think. It is meant to be very easy to learn. It is (so far) text- and keyboard-only, since everything you need to know at any given time is on the screen. It is highly efficient to navigate.
For "what it is today" with details, & links to more about the future: http://www.onemodel.org/1/e-9223372036854622523.html
Re: Emac’s Org Mode will improve your software engineering
#73[deleted]
Re: Emac’s Org Mode will improve your software engineering
#74The biggest issue I had with org-mode was the sad state of mobile clients. They were all convoluted to set up and, once working, didn't work very well [1]. The experience was much worse that what I've become accustomed to with Todoist, Nirvana, etc. where mobile sync is pretty seamless.
Org certainly is interesting and ticks the main boxes for me: outliner/TODO system, open source, text file, etc. With a better mobile solution available, I could definitely see myself using org-mode as my primary organization system.
[1] To be fair, this was under Android. I've not rerun the experiment using iOS, but I'm seeing one MobileOrg app in the store, last updated in 2013, with the most recent comments citing issues similar to what I experienced.
Re: Emac’s Org Mode will improve your software engineering
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
Emacs org-mode will be there long after OneNote is gone. And the format is all text. It's a life-long investment.
There are already (to me) very useful places where I can get OneNote where I can't get emacs -- Android and iOS. I don't expect to ever see Emacs on iOS, and I tried it on android but it doesn't work well at all. Not sure why you think emacs org-mode will be around forever. While I'm sure emacs will be around forever, I've had vim (not emacs, I don't use it I will admit) extensions which rotted as new versions of vim…
Not Emacs but Org-mode.
There is http://www.orgzly.com/ for Android. not sure about iOS.
Re: Emac’s Org Mode will improve your software engineering
#76This title really puts me off. I can't find a conceivable reason for anyone who actually uses Org Mode to write it as "Emac's Org Mode". Another reason to never go to this particular website I guess.
Re: Emac’s Org Mode will improve your software engineering
#77Re: Emac’s Org Mode will improve your software engineering
#78I don't know why so many people make the point that hierarchical structures are how the brain works. Graphical structures are how the brain works. The hierarchical structure is how the physical world works (you can't put the same shirt in two closets), and we have an unfortunate habit of trying to force our brain to work the same way, but it's an impedance mismatch. Unless I'm the only one that is frustrated that you…
There are so many excellent org-mode export back-ends, it wouldn't surprise me if there was already one for graphviz[1], at least for arranging the header entries into a labeled branched graph (and with inter- and intra-document linking they aren't necessarily acyclical (trees)). And/or it shouldn't require too much effort to write one.
Re: Emac’s Org Mode will improve your software engineering
#79I don't know why so many people make the point that hierarchical structures are how the brain works. Graphical structures are how the brain works. The hierarchical structure is how the physical world works (you can't put the same shirt in two closets), and we have an unfortunate habit of trying to force our brain to work the same way, but it's an impedance mismatch. Unless I'm the only one that is frustrated that you…
>I don't know why so many people make the point that hierarchical structures are how the brain works. Graphical structures are how the brain works.
Holographic to be precise...
Re: Emac’s Org Mode will improve your software engineering
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're right about hierarchy in the world, but there's a deeper truth that you're missing that relates to hierarchical structures being more amenable to description: The fact then that many complex systems have a nearly decomposable, hierarchic structure is a major facilitating factor enabling us to understand, describe, and even "see" such systems and their parts. Or perhaps the proposition should be put the other w…
Nit: The pigeonhole principle is exactly the opposite of "only one object being in one location at a time". It says that if you have m pigeons and n holes, and m > n pigeons, at least one hole is going to have two pigeons in it.
It's not the same pigeon that's twice in the same hole though, so it's not "exactly the opposite" -- just orthogonal.