Future-Proofness of TiddlyWiki: how do I counter somebody who disagrees?

#21

I think at least to the response to the Browser being complex and ever changing they need to understand the browser is what we may call the “Universal Client” and except when we all had a hard pill to swallow to improve browser security, because of all the malware out there, browsers are thus reliable.

Browsers as a rule are possibly the most reliable backwardly compatible client that exists. After all many different operating systems access the internet through browsers, and it is the browser which is universal in nature.

Now build your apps with backward compatible tiddlywiki and you have a “universal app”, running in a backwardly compatible (mostly) Universal client, both using the same international internet protocols, which themselves are mostly backwardly compatible and need to be so because the WORLD has adopted these standards.

A lot of others will suffer if the standards on which tiddlywiki depends are broken, I would ask why worry about tiddlywiki surviving the end of the world when no one will survive the end of the world.

The fact is tiddlywiki also evolves into the glove it is designed for, in part because many people can depend on it and the worse case scenario, which we already faced once in history, that we called the TiddlyFox Apocalypse you can survive it just by choosing an appropriate browser, and even these can be virtual apps in a sandbox now.

Finally as a tiddlywiki user you have full access to the source code, nothing is hidden, if an incremental change damages it ( unlikely), an incremental fix keeps tiddlywiki going.

None of this is the case with a vast majority of applications that need compiling, have OS dependencies, use one or more programming languages and megabytes of libraries and bespoke platforms, and database demands.

TiddlyWiki is its own platform, document, app, website and software development environment, and did I say all open source?. This places tiddlywiki in an almost unique place in the pantheon of software. Take the Red Pill.

#22

Very good observation! Likely central to the issues raised in the OP?

In the time TW has existed loads of software I once had stopped working (mainly “abandonware” [e.g. Borland dumped several good programs] or OS won’t support now [e.g. many video intense games]).

I think your points about “web standards” and good browser “backwards compatibility” across platforms is a central issue in all this.

TW IS a manifestation of that and accomplishment within it.

Just a comment
TT

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#23

Oh man, thanks for taking the time for that quality stuff. Armed with that, insta-thought about the naysayer’s argument (of TiddlyWiki being the opposite of future-proof) and the counter-argument: “That’s not a knife. THAT’s a knife!”

#24

I never expect anybody to find something I’m doing of any interest, so it is always a very fun surprise when somebody indicates interest in something from this sponge to yours, even if just for-the-giggles entertainment value.

Thanks for taking the (and giving the gift of your) time!

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#25

Proof is in the pudding for anybody who wants to play around…

Wanna step back in time to December 31st, 2005?
TiddlyWiki - a reusable non-linear personal web notebook

Man, just a little over 200KB. If somebody wants a simple notepad on steroids …

#26

My understanding is this. Whenever we store some data in a program, what we want is that we should be able to retrieve that data whenever we want down the road. In this context:

  1. Tiddlywiki is basically 2 things: HTML and Javascript. It will exist till these two technologies exist.
  2. Tiddlywiki is basically text. And tiddlers can be exported to text. If I export a small tiddler to a .tid file, it becomes this:

created: 20220417154716382
field_1: value_1
modified: 20220417154845389
tags:
title: Children’s Poems

Mary had a little lamb.

There couldn’t be a simpler form! If you can’t trust plain old text, you can’t trust anything else!

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#27

I know, right?

What could be going on with my naysayers (well, the first one) is that some folk who don’t take the time to understand what TiddlyWiki is (just standards-compliant HTML, CSS, and javascript), think of TiddlyWiki like they think of Flash: i.e. some kind of proprietary thing that isn’t based on standards.

Shoulder-shrug…

#28

I had no idea the “first version” and “second version” were still alive and kicking without even a Wayback Machine link. Thanks, @pmario, for those links.

@Charlie_Veniot, the proof is in the pudding right there with those “first” and “second” links. What more proof do those naysayers need?

Programming-wise, I cut my teeth on BASIC at the ripe old age of 12 in 1979 13 in 1980 on a Commodore VIC-20.

Before I got a cassette tape drive, I’d type in code from magazines (mostly Compute! magazine) to use productivity programs and games. Productivity is italicized because I can’t picture how productive I could have been at 12 years old with no storage and no printer, but I did learn! So I guess that counts for something.

Fun times and fond memories.

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#29

Yeah, I was just a little bit later: Got my Vic-20 in '83 when I was 13.

Still a big fan of computing for those days, hence my BASIC Anywhere Machine project, tying in a little bit of that retro fun with the goodness that is TiddlyWiki. My kind of programming for the web browser.

Aside: Yeah, I could have gone with earlier TiddlyWiki instances, but I felt a little bit more comfortable with the Dec 2005 version to make my easy argument with them other guys.

#30

For some reason, reading that made me question when we got the VIC-20 (for Christmas). It was 1980, not '79. I need to reformat that part of my memory.

I double-checked and Wikipedia says the VIC-20 came out in 1980 and I’m pretty sure mom and dad got it for us when it was brand new.

Strangely, I don’t remember either of us boys (I have one older brother) asking for the thing because mom and dad in those days had a pretty tight budget and we were pretty good about not asking for expensive stuff.

But, that one gift probably impacted our future lives more than any other single gift. (My brother would argue that his 8th-grade graduation gift of a 35mm camera was significant, too. While his work isn’t on computers like mine, he uses his computer a lot for his photography hobby, too. So, there’s that.)

Anyway, I’d say I had an ideal path in programming (for the day):

  • BASIC to learn programming.
  • Pascal to tighten that knowledge down to strict adherence to the rules of the language
  • C (and a smidgen of C++ which was pretty new in the days I took the class) to practice all that other junk I learned in a totally different way

After those first three languages, it was pretty easy for me to learn others.

#31

Yeah, I got mine as a gift from my step-grandpa. He was an electronics technician, and he saw the future of computing and wanted to set me up. Set me up for a career he did: I’m a career OpenText Gupta Team Developer (aka Gupta SQLWindows) guy, 2-tier Windows software development.

Gupta Team Developer has been since 1995 the champagne of programming languages for the way my sponge works. I have a major dislike for all of the top languages of today. So hobby programming, I stick with my second preference: good old no fuss no muss BASIC. For actually programming something that works in the web browser: TiddlyWiki filtering/widgets/etc. does rock. (BASIC and TiddlyWiki working together, that gets my geek mojo going something silly.)

My next favorite: Modula-II of all things, followed not that closely by Pascal. Fortran was okay. After that, I dislike C and C++ so much that I actually group those two with COBOL. If somebody told me I had to do a project with only one of C or COBOL, I’d actually have a horrible time deciding.

Yeah, I’m fussy…

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