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Comment by douglaswlance | Hacker News Reader

There is nothing that compares to using your preferred text editor to write personal knowledge documents like this. I swapped over to [Foam](https://foambubble.github.io/foam/) in VSCode recently when it was released, and it's like a breath of fresh air. I can use my keyboard shortcuts, extensions, and snippets. Nothing else can compare.

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In the last week, I've started using Foam too.

It hits the sweet spot for me:

- Plain Markdown files stored in git; exactly what I am used to for code.

- Editor is VisualStudioCode, which I always have open, and can configure however I like.

- No vendor lock-in.

Would you say it's an editor lock-in?

I can make pretty much the same argument for say, vim or emacs, and say that plain markdown + fugitive/magit hits the sweet spot.

I am just trying to understand where's the vendor lock-in thing coming into the picture here.

Ultimately, it's just Markdown files. There isn't any data stored in addition to your Markdown files. So if you want to change "vendors," you are free to do so without penalty.

You have to do the sync via GitHub, which is in and of itself a vendor lock-in in my opinion.

I really don't get why I can't just point to any Git repo for syncing purposes.

I only started using it today so may be missing something, but how/why is it locked into GitHub? I can’t see anything specific to GitHub (and I used the full recommended extension set).

Not only that but I can’t see anything to stop you setting it up in a more typical cloud file syncing service (e.g. Dropbox) directory and having everything happen effortlessly in the background?

There's nothing requiring the use of GitHub, you can 100% use your own Git repo for syncing purposes. Definitely a big plus of Foam and similar approaches of assembling open primitives into a useful package =)

How do you organize your notes? Do you have one big file for everything, one file for one note, one file for argument, or something else? Do you keep a date on your notes?

Maybe you can share a bit about how you organize your written down knowledge?

I use a flat folder structure. All my markdown files are in a single folder.

I use metadata sections in the header of each document to organize and configure it.

The documents themselves are structured differently depending on their topic. My journal document is a long running single document with timestamps. Other documents are structured in paragraphs, others are simply bulleted lists. Of course, everything is linked by tags, which are the core organizational mechanism.

I've found that rigid organizational structures don't lead to better outcomes. It's best to let the structure develop naturally through tagging.

100% in the same boat. I have historically used notes products for hours and then quit; I am days into Foam and I love it more all the time.

I’m hoping this will include inline text transclusion soon. I’m sure there are other solutions for viewing images too.

You can use markdown to link to images and use a markdown preview extension to view the image inline.

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