Power User Backgrounds and Skillsets

Café
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#1

I had a friend asking me the other day, “With as much time as you spend tinkering with your wiki, you would think you had a cert for it.” and it got me thinking, what sort of backgrounds are common for TiddlyWiki power users, plugin developers, etc. and what sort of skills do you aquire from picking up TW?

For me, I just one day decided to play around with it after looking for an alternative to OneNote, and if I didn’t have a love for messing with settings ( Thank you, Linux ) and config/autoexec files ( CS:GO, I’m sorry for all the monstrosities I made. /j ) I probably would have had a hard time getting into it past just using the default settings.

Since then, I feel like I have a decent grasp on HTML, CSS, JSON, a tiiny smidgen of JavaScript, and a better idea of how to organize stuff. So I ask this, is TiddlyWiki a gateway into front-end web development, or more a nifty tool that uses similar skills?

What sort of backgrounds does everyone else have?

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#2

Software Development. Here is my Résumé/CV.

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#3

Your resumé is impressive, I’m sure studying JS while working in an ambulance must of been a unique experience.

I visit your site from time to time to read your notes (though, I rarely understand their contents, as I’m still learning their topics lol)

Mind if I ask when you picked up tiddlywiki in your timeline? I’m curious if it contributed to the things you ended up mastering :blush:

#4

I’m a professional TS/Rust developer worked for TikTok/AFFiNE. Writing JS for TW is like a game for me (stay in Flow). But I find it not so interesting as I adapt to it.

So I tend to write Wikitext these days, because it is getting more and more powerful these years. Learn & use a new language (DSL) is fun.

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#5

@Justin_H this GitHub discussion might be an interesting reading for you Celebrating past TiddlyWiki contributors · Jermolene/TiddlyWiki5 · Discussion #7983 · GitHub

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#6

That is interesting, I appreciate you sharing it here, it fits perfectly. :blush:

#7

Fun thread, I came to TiddlyWiki many years ago after learning about it from Lifehacker. I was working as a Six Sigma Black Belt (Process Improvement) and have used it also as a OneNote alternative through many twists and turns career wise - now as running an Analytics department. I had no exposure to HTML, CSS, or Javascript before, just a little VB/VBA, so I’ve definitely had to learn a bit along the way of customizing things! I’m “almost there” with getting TiddlyWiki where I want it for project management, and continue to look forward to further multi-user development - my main area of interest.

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#8

Prior to diving into TiddlyWiki I did lots of amateur FileMaker database development (as well as dabbling in graphic design, desktop publishing and informal website design). Like TiddlyWiki, I think of FileMaker as a kind of gateway drug software: a package that gets people hooked with an accessible, intuitive, and customizable GUI for doing things they already know they want to do…

And then, since the solution is easily modified and extended on the fly (with very little risk of breaking what’s already good), one ends up gradually exploring and developing confidence with additional functional niches, tiny little portals that open into corridors and gardens… (Actually, it was vital with FileMaker, as well, that there was an online community to which I could take questions of the “Surely there’s a (better) way…” type.)

Working with relational databases gave me a kind of “meta-affordance” x-ray vision for a wide range of activities and challenges. For example, an encounter with the drudgery of writing out the same grammar explanation on student assignments (and thinking “Gee, I feel like I’ve written this before… maybe to this very student… Hm…”) now struck me as an opportunity to accumulate a database of such comments, each connected to a short abbreviation code, with easy type-ahead and search aids, and (!) — relational database synapses at work — why not an easy window into the current student’s comment history across submissions, with visual flag for repeat offenses. :thinking:

I call this “meta-affordance” perception because without lots of relational database habits, I would not even have seen the problem-space within which solutions like these could be desired, let alone built and used.

So when I approach TiddlyWiki, I treat it as good at pretty much everything a relational database can do — while also being better and more nimble with on-the-fly stuff and web-facing communications.

To be clear, in the TiddlyWiki world, I do not see myself as a “Power User.”

But I do see the world in TiddlyWiki ways, and am content to be a “User of the Power”.

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#9

TiddlyWiki’s wikitext doesn’t cease to impress me with the things you can do with it, though I’ve barely scratched the surface on what can be done with either JS or TW wikitext.

As do I, I’m interested in what the final result will feel like, and what sort of plugins could be made for it.
It would be interesting to see an entire website built using tiddlywiki where comments can be left on pages, and access levels applied to specific users for viewing access rights.

Ah, so you and I share a bit in common, I had a small amount of VBA experience from using Excel, such a small internet lol

Hm, first I’ve heard of FileMaker, just a quick google image search makes me think it’s a bit more complex than TiddlyWiki, but then again, I’m sure someone familiar with it looking at TiddlyWiki might feel the same way lol

That’s a pretty reasonable approach. I’ve come to think of each tiddler as sets of fields, which seems to be a common format in a lot of documents and software. The first to come to mind for me would be a KeePass database file.
Honestly, it could be applied to all formats with some adjustments, you could use the field-names for which cell(s) have content in them, and then the field value for the data stored in the cell, if you were to compare a tiddler to an excel workbook.
Oop- Sorry, I digressed. That tends to happens when it comes to TiddlyWiki thoughts for me lol

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#10

If asked this I may be inclined to say I cant separate “tinkering with my wiki” from personal and professional activities, development, life long learning and making use of software and the key internet technologies.

I think it is not a gateway itself, as escaping all gateways and structures that limit your path. Each field such as “Front-end web development” need to be surveyed to see if it TiddlyWiki is a gateway to it. But it could be a gateway to cooking, backend programing, application development, knowledge management, analytics, genetics, genealogy, book writting …

There are more different backgrounds than there are ways to use tiddlywiki. There may be some more common like mine, IT Professional, Solution Designer Knowledge and Information management (past programmer) however the membership of this community is VERY diverse.

  • The only commonality may be they discovered TiddlyWiki in the noise, and learned its versatility.

I would not claim this, that is for others (to nominate me) , But I think you are a “Power User”.

I sometimes call my self a “Super User” to explain I try not to revert to non- tiddlywiki methods unless there is a gap, and I try to get the dev team to fill the gaps.