[HN Gopher] Program above and beyond your actual ability by usin...
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Program above and beyond your actual ability by using FreeMind
(2012)
Author : Tomte
Score : 37 points
Date : 2022-02-08 09:37 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (alexkrupp.typepad.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (alexkrupp.typepad.com)
| nathan_compton wrote:
| Curious as to whether I am alone in finding mind mapping almost
| bizarrely useless. Maybe I just have a good working memory, but
| putting everything on a page in 2d seems absurdly fiddly, even
| irritating, to me.
|
| One super concrete problem I have with it is that it encourages
| hierarchical organization, which is almost never how systems work
| or how I tend to think of them.
| dlsa wrote:
| I find mind mapping really useful. People have different kinds
| of brains. I can look at a mind map and see status across
| multiple projects almost instantly. This is across dozens of
| projects. Not superficial details either: What needs to be done
| / whats the hold up. Who is doing what.
|
| I can't get that detail from lists or other tools. A whiteboard
| with sticky notes needs to be huge to get this level of detail.
| Room size.
| hyperpallium2 wrote:
| IMHO hierarchies are useful, the issue is _which_ hierarchy,
| being able to change it easily, and having more than one.
|
| A sequential form (like text or code) has only one hierarchical
| organization, but references - names of many kinds - encode
| graphs.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| I agree, mind mapping has never been at all useful to me,
| however when younger I had a memory that was remarked upon as
| being phenomenal by everybody that knew me (not so much
| anymore) and for this reason I never developed any note-taking
| skills at all.
|
| So perhaps it is the memory that makes us perceive the tool as
| useless.
|
| on edit: actually another thing that probably affects its
| utility for me, I am not a visual thinker at all. I organize
| things in blocks of text, I think in paragraphs. I have thought
| I should introduce my daughter to mind mapping, she thinks
| visually.
| nathan_compton wrote:
| I don't know how I would describe my thought processes.
| Typically I am not really aware of how they work except for
| having a vague sense of objects of various textures and
| consistencies sort of sliding around, banging together,
| clicking, etc in the back of my head somewhere. Neither
| visual nor textual.
| mmcdermott wrote:
| I never got much mileage out of mind maps for note taking or
| knowledge management despite giving it the old college try. I
| do occasionally use them to collect my thoughts (pulling
| together a state of the union, if you will).
| Alex3917 wrote:
| > which is almost never how systems work or how I tend to think
| of them.
|
| As a concrete example of where this was recently useful for me,
| consider the organization of my blog post on software
| architecture:
|
| https://alexkrupp.typepad.com/sensemaking/2021/06/django-for...
|
| The reason why it's (imho) generally lucid and well organized
| is because I put all the bullet notes that I had into FreeMind,
| so I was able to easily drag them around and see the
| connections between the ideas. This is what allowed me to
| eventually figure out what the larger themes were.
|
| Even if systems aren't hierarchical in their natural state, we
| tend to have represent them hierarchically in order to share
| with others -- e.g. in a blog post, a book, a YouTube video,
| etc. And so being able to have insights around hierarchy, and
| organize your thinking around hierarchy, tends to be useful.
|
| In terms of programming, even ten years later I still put
| everything I learn into the same mindmap. So most recently this
| has been Angular (and the upgrade process from AngularJS),
| Kubernetes (for consulting), Typescript, etc.
|
| It's definitely a lifesaver for documenting obscure AWS
| operations that I only need a few times a year, but where it
| would be a huge pain to have to go back to the original AWS
| documentation each time. E.g. using FreeMind it takes me 10
| seconds to figure out how to tail the logs from my beanstalk
| instances, whereas just using Google that would be an ordeal.
| bayindirh wrote:
| I use mind mapping as a tool for flow, and it allows me to dig
| an idea or a concept very deeply, very fast.
|
| For example: If I have an unclear task at hand, it allows me to
| explode into sub-tasks, or ideas and in 5-10 minutes I have a
| big blob of more concrete stuff.
|
| Also mind mapping is very useful to put very large concepts on
| a big canvas. e.g.: Need to design a feature? Easy. Write the
| feature, explore requirements/dependencies/blockers.
|
| Lastly, I love to design contracts or tender documents with it.
| Put all requirements, group under sections, map dependencies,
| write notes, and convert to a document. Esp. with a large
| group. Reduces a 3 week intense work sprint to a week or 10
| days of normal work at most.
|
| Mind mapping is immensely useful and flexible. I both use
| FreeMind and MindNode.
| gowld wrote:
| but why a mind map instead of a simple outline?
| bayindirh wrote:
| Because it's extremely fast. Enter for a new item in same
| level, tab for one lower level. Also it allows visual
| organization and reorganization. When I start to mindmap, I
| can do a one man brainstorming to flesh out the subject I'm
| working on, software or not.
|
| Moreover, you can add much more information under every
| bubble, esp. with FreeMind. Also there are other ways for
| showing different kind of relationships, like drawing an
| arrow between two nodes and labeling it "depends" or "may
| contradict" or whatever.
|
| Maybe I work extremely fast with it, because my brain works
| exactly like a mind map. I explode an idea in my mind, and
| continue exploring by re-centering to a sub-idea. Mind
| mapping allows me to reflect that exploration process to an
| infinite canvas, so I don't stress about backtracking or
| remembering a web of ever growing connections.
| smokel wrote:
| A problem I face is that mind maps represent only _one_ form of
| organization. In my head I can switch between various
| perspectives to some extent. If I try to make a computer help
| with the organization, I typically lose track of the mental map
| that I have, once the graph layout changes. I wonder how this
| process works in a brain, where switching feels more fluent.
|
| Also, your comment made me wonder if a 3d map would be
| intrinsically better, but I doubt that that is the case. The
| distance metric is perhaps the limiting factor. A time
| dimension (for instance in the form of hyperlinking) works
| quite well, but obviously this requires time and effort from
| the user.
|
| And in this context I would like to mention Kinopio, which
| makes mind mapping fun: https://kinopio.club/
| joe_the_user wrote:
| It sounds great but what happened to it between then and now? And
| will github copilot suffer the same fate?
| vajrabum wrote:
| Freemind is written in Java. It hasn't got much if any love in
| the last 10 years but it works fine. There's also a fork named
| Freeplane that's actively developed. The file formats are
| mostly compatible. I believe Freeplane files have some stuff in
| them that Freemind ignores.
| Tomte wrote:
| Unfortunately, Freeplane doesn't work with current Java. I
| just installed another, older Java, just for Freeplane.
| Alex3917 wrote:
| Not much work has been done on it, but it still runs fine on
| modern devices. If it ever stops running, it's an open file
| format, so you can always transition to FreePlane or OrgMode
| stefanba3 wrote:
| I've tried to adopt mm tools a few times over the years. To me
| the main problem is I end up spending too much time adding things
| I never use again. Maybe I am just doing it wrong?
| ra88it wrote:
| Cue the org-mode brigade! (Of which I consider myself a member.)
|
| I haven't used FreeMind specifically, but when I hear
| hierarchical organization with folding, I remember the rabbit
| hole that I fell into 20 years ago...and still haven't climbed
| out quite yet. From Shadow Plan[0] on Palm OS, through so many
| others, and landing at org-mode for the last decade or so.
|
| 0: http://www.codejedi.com/shadowplan/downloads.html
| dang wrote:
| Discussed at the time:
|
| _Program above and beyond your actual ability by using FreeMind_
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4580537 - Sept 2012 (67
| comments)
| yboris wrote:
| Mildly related self promotion: see your _function call graph_ for
| your _TypeScript_ files. It might help you get a map-like view of
| what is happening in your code.
|
| https://github.com/whyboris/TypeScript-Call-Graph
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| I use iThoughts on iOS to similar effect in my technical domain.
| The ability to collapse information domains quickly and navigate
| complex trees in real time basically let me cheat when it comes
| to learning new things.
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