
Why I love text files - telemachos
http://www.matthias-endler.de/2010/why-i-love-text-files/
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StavrosK
I'm sorry, I know one shouldn't criticise if it's not constructive, but this
must be the piece with the largest text/content ratio I've ever read, and I've
read a Stephen King novel.

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tspiteri
Maybe the author just loves text.

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frou_dh
He uses a text file for his TODO list so that mankind will be able to read it
in 1000 years! I wish my work were that important.

When I was younger and first using a computer, I would "Open with Notepad" all
sorts of files to see if anything about the structure was readable. That's why
I liked text files then, these days I like them because they are often
indicators of the mindset of simplicity.

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sprout
Actually he uses it, I imagine, so that he will be able to read it next year.

I haven't even tried to use any todo apps, (the text file has always served me
well) but what experience I have with proprietary formats is that they're a
poor choice for storing data, since either they're poorly designed or the
designer is constantly redesigning them and invalidating your data.

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frou_dh
That's why the statement was doubly odd, because todos are pretty transient.

I like Things for Mac myself because it automates repeating and scheduled todo
items, and has a distinction between completable projects and areas of upkeep.
A programmer can leave any time they want by processing its XML file.

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jedwhite
There is a great chapter in The Pragmatic Programmer on why you should stick
with text files for everything possible. Section 3 / Chapter 14 "The Power of
Plain Text". It argues that as programmers, our base material as craftspeople
isn't wood or metal, but knowledge, and with plain text we have the ability to
manipulate knowledge with virtually every tool at our disposal.

[http://www.amazon.com/Pragmatic-Programmer-Journeyman-
Master...](http://www.amazon.com/Pragmatic-Programmer-Journeyman-
Master/dp/020161622X)

This blog post doesn't express things nearly so well as the book, but the
argument has validity.

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aufreak3
Interesting higher level questions arise from this -

Is it because we've built so many tools around text that text seems so
powerful, or is it because text is powerful that we've built all these tools?

Knowledge is of the mind+brain+body+environs. Text is just data. Just as
machine code is "just data" if you don't have a processor that "understands"
it. Remember - it took 20 years to decipher the hieroglyphics on the rosetta
stone. Also, good luck with storing images in plain text.

Moral of the story - don't get too attached to anything :)

If you can't and are paranoid about losing your digital stuff, maybe DSpace
will help - <http://www.dspace.org/>

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runjake
The blog post and his comment have nothing to do with backups. They point out
the flexibility and human readability of text files, as they are used in
numerous different formats (xml, yaml, html, ics, csv, sql, etc etc etc) which
can be easily parsed.

Binary data isn't as easily human readable or parsable. Images can be stored
in text when base64 encoded, or when a text-based image format is used, such
as XPM (old hackers may remember using vi as their X11 image editor of choice,
back in the day) and SVG.

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aufreak3
DSpace is not about backups indeed. Its about problems like this one -

An acquaintance of mine has a true blue 5.25 inch "floppy" disk with text data
of his research that he can't recover - 'cos the disk's format is
inaccessible, the text is not in ASCII (probably EBCDIC), drives that read it
aren't available now, the OS that knows the file system (CP/M I think) isn't
available, the cpu that the OS ran on isn't available now .

I'll grant that you _can_ recover it, but only with _great_ difficulty - sort
of a Rosetta problem.

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pavel_lishin
I look forward to his next post, "Why I love bits."

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stretchwithme
I think bytes are next. Then bits. Then the glory of square waves.

Seriously, I can understand the fascination with something so fundamental to
programming. I'm just surprised the favorite editor wasn't mentioned.

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heyrhett
Have I told you guys how much i love electrons lately?

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awakeasleep
Square waves and electrons are seriously some of the most beautiful,
incredible things.

But for my money, how about logic? Why the hell do logical operators make
sense, how have ideas with absolutely no physical basis taken a life of their
own and woven all this magic around us?

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pavel_lishin
You ought to read Stephenson's Anathem.

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techbio
Text became what it is to me today after my first revelatory experiences with
Linux/bash--something like being six years old and realizing the alphabet is
all I ever need to describe anything and everything.

Indescribable feeling.

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TorKlingberg
Go ahead and use text files, but make sure you specify exactly what encoding
is used. Saying it's "just plain text" is not enough. UTF-8 is fine and
convenient, just make sure your code actually encodes/decodes it when it
should.

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kleiba
From the quote at the end of the article: "The continued dominance of the
command line among experts [...]" -- is that even true anymore? I certainly
live in the shell, but looking at my younger co-workers who are in their 20's,
they hardly ever use the command line.

The IDE is the new command line, it seems.

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mdwrigh2
As a young 20-something (20, actually, to be exact), I'd say that the best
programmers I know still use the command line to a significant degree. Though
we are small in number compared to the number of people who live in some IDE.

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dreaming
The concept seems obvious, but it hasn't stopped a slow sapping of
functionality and permutability of data in the face of 'easy to use' solely
GUI based tools. To say nothing of the rather difficult task of automating
software without a CLI component...

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TedBlosser
i run my life off my todo.txt file as well. i also recently discovered the
plaintext iphone app that syncs this to my dropbox - highly recommend it if
you run your life out of txt docs too.

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meatsock
well you couldn't fit _all_ of human knowledge in a text file like he claims,
not to mention how hard it'd be to give it a proper filename.

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frou_dh
Space Ruler Xzorganax, I present to you: misc.txt

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robgough
and if you run out of space in misc.txt, there's always stuff.txt too.

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satori99
You just named two of the files i currently have on my desktop.

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freakwit
I think we have the same desktop.

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Tycho
Love the design of that website.

