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Launch HN: Athens Research (YC W21) – Open-Source Roam Research

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Re: Launch HN: Athens Research (YC W21) – Open-Source Roam Research

#51

Post by tangjeff0 »

ipsum2 wrote: post #45
tangjeff0 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1- I cover this in the post: > Something else that's interesting about the most powerful networked tools like Roam and Athens is that you can't really make these apps with JavaScript or plaintext/markdown. For maximum power, you want a true graph database. Both Roam and Athens leverage a front-end graph database called DataScript, which is written in Clojure(Script). JavaScript doesn't have a native analog, and Neo4j…

Have you benchmarked this? I don't think a lifetimes worth of notes (maybe 10,000+ documents?) will slow down sqlite, even with many interconnecting nodes.

I haven't yet! I'm sure some Roam DB's are over 10k documents. If Datascript-based applications can get past the initial load time with better client-side caching, performance will always be better. "Local-first" apps could become their own new category. I recommend reading https://www.inkandswitch.com/local-first.html

Re: Launch HN: Athens Research (YC W21) – Open-Source Roam Research

#52

Post by tangjeff0 »

sandGorgon wrote: post #30

This is pretty cool! I do urge you to take your domain name versus https://athensresearch.github.io/athens/ Could you talk about the clojure part of it? how instrumental was it to build Athens Research. could you have built it on Electron + Typescript for example

We have athensresearch.org and athens-research.com, neither of which I love.

We actually do use Electron! ClojureScript compiles to JS at the end of the day.

Ultimately Clojure is pretty necessary to use our database, Datascript, a graph db with its own data query language, Datalog. Datalog is a descendant of prolog, and makes recursive/reverse queries trivially easy.

Re: Launch HN: Athens Research (YC W21) – Open-Source Roam Research

#53

Post by tangjeff0 »

cloverr20 wrote: post #50

I have been using vimwiki for around a year now, using pandoc to convert into html with a simple custom template, stork-search to search the files and syncing the collection weekly over to my other computer, phone. I love this setup as there is no internet needed, full text search on all the documents and very less friction while starting to write something. I have tried other apps like obsidian, roam etc but keep co…

Simplicity wins. Pencil and paper FTW

Re: Launch HN: Athens Research (YC W21) – Open-Source Roam Research

#54

Post by pps »

tangjeff0 wrote: post #38
pps wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The current major difference between markdown-based and db-based apps is block references. Over time, the difference will become significant as knowledge bases grow in size. That should be true, but so far it is Roam with the biggest problems with performance, from 30+ seconds of loading each time you load/refresh tab to constant lags in normal usage for some users :) I personally like the most this mixed approach…

It's not either or as you mentioned! Plan to have user data stored in plain files as well. Roam's performance suffers mainly on first-load because they are server-first, and they load the entire db into memory at the beginning (such that it's quite fast thereafter). Once we have true local-first data structures with something like https://github.com/replikativ/datahike , we could still have fast in-memory, but also f…

> Plan to have user data stored in plain files as well.

That would be cool :)

> such that it's quite fast thereafter

Not always :) I saw that myself and I also see complaints on Roam Slack. In my experience it mostly depends on how many queries you have on given page, but sometimes it lags (long waiting time when switching between pages or opening note in sidebar) also with simple, "atomic" notes. But they overall struggle with polishing existing parts before adding new features, so maybe performance is still on its early days in Roam.

Anyway, I wish you good luck with your project :)

Re: Launch HN: Athens Research (YC W21) – Open-Source Roam Research

#55

Post by lrae »

Graziano_M wrote: post #31
helloguillecl wrote: post #16

This is amazing. I like Roam Research but I refuse to give full control of something so important to any third party. At this point we have all experienced what it is like to give the control over your digital life to FAANG-like entities with priorities other than their own users well-being. We can and should ask for better. If it will be my second brain (please note how important this sounds), what I want is to be a…

Roam has plans for offline-only storage.

Is that out of beta and working now? Also is it still only available in the $500 (?) dollar plan or what ever it was?

Re: Launch HN: Athens Research (YC W21) – Open-Source Roam Research

#56

Post by lrae »

> In order to opt-out of analytics, please become a User or Sponsor through OpenCollective.

Interesting way to monetize, not sure how I feel about that, but it would be nice if you'd at least list what data you are collecting (or link to your privacy policy/faq/what ever.)

Re: Launch HN: Athens Research (YC W21) – Open-Source Roam Research

#57

Post by Fractal_HQ »

gw wrote: post #24

Y'all both are making great tools but consider giving a read-only view of the page when javascript is disabled. After disabling JS this gives me a blank white screen: https://athensresearch.github.io/athens/ Same thing when i tried it with roam.

Considering the page you linked is a javascript application, why would anyone expect to be able to use a Javascript application without Javascript?

Re: Launch HN: Athens Research (YC W21) – Open-Source Roam Research

#58

Post by ska »

tangjeff0 wrote: post #53
cloverr20 wrote: post #50

I have been using vimwiki for around a year now, using pandoc to convert into html with a simple custom template, stork-search to search the files and syncing the collection weekly over to my other computer, phone. I love this setup as there is no internet needed, full text search on all the documents and very less friction while starting to write something. I have tried other apps like obsidian, roam etc but keep co…

Simplicity wins. Pencil and paper FTW

Searchability really suffers in paper systems.

Re: Launch HN: Athens Research (YC W21) – Open-Source Roam Research

#59

Post by cloverr20 »

ska wrote: post #58
tangjeff0 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Simplicity wins. Pencil and paper FTW

Searchability really suffers in paper systems.

The search ability is one thing you will definitely want as your collection gets big. I got to know about stork-search from a post in hn and it worked very well for me, https://stork-search.net/
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