It's the 10-second rule: if you can't file something in 10 seconds, you won't do it. Todo.txt involves cut-and-paste, the simplest interface we can imagine.

It's also the simplest way to find intercomation. EMACS, Moz and Panther have incremental search: when you type a "t" it goes to the first mention of "t", add "to" and you jump to the first instance of "to", etc.

This is being added to Longhorn (Unix geeks, we've had this since Jan 1 1900, and it will go away in 2038).

Power-users don't trust complicated apps. Every time power-geeks has had a crash, s/he moves away from it. You can't trust software unless you've written it -- and then you're just more forgiiving.

Text files are portable (except for CRLF issues) between mac and win and *nix.

posted by Cory Doctorow at 11:48:38 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments