Comment by surrTurr
10 hours ago
I also tried to build my own Obsidian[^1] a few months ago. However, I stopped using it after some time, since maintaining it would realistically be a full-time job. What I also found super annoying was the feeling that I'm never done with it. Whenever I encountered a rough edge or missing feature, I had to (obviously) implement it myself.
All in all, I find Obsidian as good as it gets. Also, Obsidian is probably one of the best options in terms of longevity, as all notes are just Markdown files, no proprietary DBs or other BS that could lock you in.
As one who has spent years off and on building one, kudos for getting yourself out. I agree with your assessment. I think there's still room for more markdown based note apps and ideas, but it needs to be either a (long term) passion project or have a viable funding strategy. There's an endless slew of not only edge cases and base behaviors, but enhancements and design decisions, on top of maintenance. Obsidian w/ some customization is going to hit a sweet spot for most hackers.
Also, the biggest thing I've appreciated is just how hard it is to tackle a side project while juggling life. Things that would take 2 weeks (80 hours) at work easily ballon into 3 months; things that would take a month end up taking well over a year. Suddenly an idea that is only a few weeks of full time work, is half-way done years later.
Or use Joplin which is open source and also creates markdown files, and setting up sync to a cloud provider that you probably already have is free.
Joplin uses its own database, it can't edit Markdown files.