Notion's mid-life crisis • Hacker News Board

Re: Notion's mid-life crisis

#151

Post by Majestic121 » Mon, Sep 30, 2024, 1:55 AM UTC

redsparrow wrote: post #130

Aurornis wrote: post #50

I enjoyed Notion at first for certain tasks, but it became much less enjoyable as everyone tried to force everything into emoji-laden Notion docs. The Notion spaces used by the Product and Program managers I worked with in the past few years have become a collection of half-finished documents that are always out of date, hard to find, and often superseded by some new Notion page they created but forgot to tell us abo…

> a collection of half-finished documents that are always out of date I think of company wikis as a place where information goes to die. A useful feature, which I'm sure exists somewhere, would be "freshness" checks on pages. A timestamp for the last time someone looked at this and said "yes, this is still valid". For pages that are important, a team could set up recurring tasks for people to do periodic freshness ch…

It's a base feature of notion, exactly as you describe it : a freshness stamp and notifications to recheck every 7/30/90/custom days

Re: Notion's mid-life crisis

#152

Post by dartos » Mon, Sep 30, 2024, 4:01 PM UTC

refulgentis wrote: post #88

dartos wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

people also use jira as a support ticket system. Sprint planning system. Kanban system. I’ve seen it set up so that it can track work across kanban teams and scrum teams. Jira has deep integration with bitbucket, confluence, and GitHub. It can manage your CI pipelines as well. Jira is an anything app with a bend towards project management. Setting up jira workflows is a whole career. Source: I worked at Atlassian for…

people also use email as a support ticket system. Sprint planning system. Kanban system. I’ve seen it set up so that it can track work across kanban teams and scrum teams. Email has deep integration with bitbucket, confluence, and GitHub. Email can manage your CI pipelines as well. Email is an anything app with a bend towards project management. Setting up email workflows is a whole career. Source: I worked at Google…

…okay?

I mean email isn’t an app, it’s a handful of protocols, but… sure

Re: Notion's mid-life crisis

#153

Post by ethics13 » Mon, Sep 30, 2024, 7:36 PM UTC

anh690136 wrote: post #110

I started as a Notion user, but then it gets complicated and overwhelming quickly. It can be a good database and beautiful system, but for individual use cases, it’s too much for ADHD. I tried to use Apple Notes and Docs from then, but with too many notes, insights get buried and cannot be found easily. So I built an AI note app called saner.ai since & it worked better for me at least.

Aer you using Apple Notes and Docs now?

Re: Notion's mid-life crisis

#154

Post by Fire-Dragon-DoL » Mon, Sep 30, 2024, 10:54 PM UTC

I find incredibly disappointing that so many new features have been walled behind higher tiers.

Notion forgot that we pay monthly price so that they can keep developing their software to our benefit too

Re: Notion's mid-life crisis

#155

Post by ksec » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 8:43 AM UTC

I am reading all the comments and I am feel very different with the general sentiments here.

Notion is like Excel. It isn't or wasn't meant to be used in certain ways, but its simplicity and flexility meant 99% of the world is running on Excel. From SMEs to Fortune 500s. Because that is what normal non-tech users, from managers to exec know how to use and understand.

There are a lot I dont like about Notion. Mostly on performance. But I valued it a lot because that is how 70% of my team understand and can continue to work together.

Re: Notion's mid-life crisis

#156

Post by yencabulator » Tue, Oct 01, 2024, 10:51 PM UTC

jitl wrote: post #94

skissane wrote: post #37

I use Notion because I have to, not because I like it. Other teams still use Confluence. People said Notion is a lot better than Confluence. Well, I agree I'd rather use it over Confluence, but that's a very low bar for comparison. For ages they didn't have a find-and-replace feature. I just checked, it looks like they've finally added it in the last few months, but this is the first I notice. They claim you can expo…

(I work at Notion) Our public API format is not the "native" format used by the Notion editor. The overly-nested format we designed the public API is aimed at supporting statically typed programming languages like Java or Golang that do not have (tagged) union types natively. Instead we represent each option in the union type as a nullable field pointing to a nested object. This makes the structure much easier to dec…

Switching an enum on a `type` field is very much doable and common practice in statically typed languages.

Rust's serde calls that "internally tagged": https://serde.rs/enum-representations.html

Re: Notion's mid-life crisis

#157

Post by jitl » Wed, Oct 02, 2024, 6:05 PM UTC

yencabulator wrote: post #156

jitl wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(I work at Notion) Our public API format is not the "native" format used by the Notion editor. The overly-nested format we designed the public API is aimed at supporting statically typed programming languages like Java or Golang that do not have (tagged) union types natively. Instead we represent each option in the union type as a nullable field pointing to a nested object. This makes the structure much easier to dec…

Switching an enum on a `type` field is very much doable and common practice in statically typed languages. Rust's serde calls that "internally tagged": https://serde.rs/enum-representations.html

I specifically said "statically typed programming languages like Java or Golang" because those are languages without constructs that can easily represent something like a Typescript union-of-objects. There are many statically typed programming languages that do support union types!

Rust structured enums qualify - each enum case can have fields, so it's natural to represent a Typescript union type using a Rust enum; It's not quite the same (needs a newtype wrapper for each different combination of types in the union) but is very serviceable for the API use-case.

C and Zig have a different "union" concept where the caller needs to switch on a "tag" field like `type` in Typescript but with less compiler guidance to ensure you use the right union variant for a certain tag value.

Java and Go are more limited. Java can represent an "internally tagged" union as a superclass with subclasses, and Go can represent as an interface type with a method for getting the variant, but both require the consumer to know all the subtypes, and perform their own "if canCast(supertypeValue, unionCaseSubclass1) { // handle case 1 } else if ..." structure, which substantially hinders discoverability and requires more work.

Re: Notion's mid-life crisis

#158

Post by randito » Sat, Oct 05, 2024, 8:45 PM UTC

prdonahue wrote: post #20

Notion was clearly made by people who do not use or understand keyboard shortcuts; you can't even properly select text without using the mouse. It's been somewhat maddening switching from Confluence.

My experience with Notion keyboard use is different. It's not 100% VIM hands-on-keyboard mouse-free but it's getting there. If there was only a "insert after this block" shortcut.

My favorite is to type something then /turnh3 where /turn let's you turn the block into something else.

Re: Notion's mid-life crisis

#159

Post by LizPoggi » Tue, Oct 08, 2024, 12:51 AM UTC

Supermancho wrote: post #97

threeseed wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A tool that tries to be everything to everyone Jira doesn't try to be everything. It's a project management app. It does nothing else. Notion is wiki, CRM, project management, calendar etc.

> It's a project management app. It does nothing else. I would say it doesn't do that very well. You can't manage projects without mapping out dependencies, visually and with integrated relationship tracking. JIRA is miserable at this.

Notion databases easily allow dependencies, integrated relationship tracking and multiple ways to visualize a project roadmap. Can't speak to JIRA but Notion is continuously releasing new updates that respond to user needs. There is a major downside to this of course. As a solopreneur I find it frustrating that Notion's updates tend to serve corporate needs, but it's a good business strategy and allows Notion to continue to serve others with its free version.

Re: Notion's mid-life crisis

#160

Post by LizPoggi » Tue, Oct 08, 2024, 12:55 AM UTC

luckman212 wrote: post #84

iforgotmysocks wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple Notes is underrated. There is no flashy features to distract you. Just you and your notes.

I strongly disagree for these reasons: - note data stored in a proprietary format - no way to access note data from other apps/api - no way to export in bulk, or in any other format than PDF (a terrible format for notes) - iCloud sync is a mildly terrifying thing to entrust important data to I use Apple Notes for the occasional quick grocery list but that's about it.

Agee with you! I use a shortcut to send voice notes directly into Notion. I only use apple notes when I'm in a location I can't speak, and move them to Notion the next time I'm on my mac.