Standard Notes is a Better Project than Braindump

| foss | software | projects |

released braindump to the world last year to much fanfare. After the initial excitement from being on HN died down, and the PR’s stopped rolling in, it became a personal project once again with very few users. Over the last few weeks I have made several attempts to fix the spaghetti mess that is the current code base by refactoring the current Flask implementation, then rewriting it completely in Django, and even started a branch to investigate rewriting the whole app in PHP using Laravel. Other commitments took precedence and Braindump remains in a fairly usable but not that special state.

Today on HN I read about a new project called Standard Notes which is the most exciting note related project that I have seen in a long time. It solves so many of the problems around cross platform compatibility that plague many other note tools. In addition its goals are to create a standard file format for simple, secure, and durable notes. Even more it has already created a platform, an ecosystem, that allows anyone to come and create additional applications, plugins, and use cases for notes.

These are some of the problems that I set out to tackle when I started braindump. After reading about Standard Notes, and using it for a few hours, I have decided that my time would be better spent contributing to that project instead of continuing to work on Braindump.

Working on Braindump has been amazing. I learned a ton, became a better programmer, and most of all had a lot of fun. I want to thank everyone who tried it, provided feedback, and sent patches. The source code for braindump will remain on GitHub but I would encourage you to try and contribute to the Standard Notes project along with me.

Thank you for reading! Share your thoughts with me on bluesky, mastodon, or via email.

Check out some more stuff to read down below.

Most popular posts this month

Recent Favorite Blog Posts

This is a collection of the last 8 posts that I bookmarked.

Articles from blogs I follow around the net

Pluralistic: Daniel de Visé's 'The Blues Brothers' (21 Jun 2025)

Today's links Daniel de Visé's 'The Blues Brothers': Far more than production gossip – an unmissable portrait of a turning point in American comedy and music. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. Object permanence: 2005, 2010, 2015, 20…

via Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow June 21, 2025

Hiding metrics from the web

In 2012, artist Ben Grosser released a browser extension called Facebook Demetricator. Once installed, it hid all metrics from Facebook’s interface: likes, comments, notifications, unread messages, and so on. “What’s going on here is that these quantifica…

via Manual do Usuário June 21, 2025

It's like surfing

The weird thing about engineering management is that you feel kinda useless. Yet if you stop, projects stop.

via swizec.com RSS Feed June 21, 2025

Generated by openring