Mgccl's Ivory Towerso tired

What's the most common type of document you update? I asked a few people, they say source codes. Ha, programmers.

For me, it's just plain text files. More specifically, lists (or "tuples" if you like math) of simple strings with no structure at all.

Lists are useful in many ways. It is SIMPLE. The only thing simpler would be a set of elements. Which is usually represented as a list anyway.

I maintain lists like books I want to read, topics I want to learn, things I want to buy, etc. They are everywhere. Everytime I need to group any objects together, I use lists.
Of course, there can be lot of structure in the above examples. Like I can assign books with what topics it concerns(even if it's just strings, like I can write "mathematical analysis #math", that's how twitter people introduced structure in first place, since twitter is just a list of status), which can make it into a list of lists, or even graphs. That will be a completely different story and it's not a concern in this topic.

Any structure beyond a set and one specific ordering is a overkill in my standards. In fact, most of the time I don't even consider the ordering of the list. Sometimes I just stumble upon a wikipedia article (currently, Language of thought) and want to put it in a list known as "Concepts I have to remember". Ordering comes helpful if I maintain a list like "What I did today"

So I'm going to write some methods and features of a really cool list
Methods: suppose list is similar to ArrayList in java.
1. insert
insert a string to the list. optionally add where to insert it to.
2. search
find and list string match some criteria
3. delete
remove a string
4. update
update a specific item in the list

That's all the operation there is, but it's possible to implement some features on top of it
1. Lists can be accessed anywhere
2. Lists can be edited anywhere, even by more than one person

oh hey, that's all...
wait, I missed out something
3. Manage the list is extremely ez, and can be done by command line, most importantly. Updating the list should be so ez, that "too much effort" can never be the excuse to not write down a list. I heard from one of my friend who says he want to create a list of books to read, but too lazy to write it down. I assume he would like it more if he can add something to the list without delay. I sometimes want to record something down, and then I get discouraged when I realize I have to open a new file, write something, then save, then give the file a name.

Hmm, with those creteria, one can make 500 different implmentations.
This sounds like remember the milk but even simpler. To-Do and task lists are lists with chronological features. That make RTM too complicated for just lists.

How do I maintain such lists? A few current simple options:
1. Use a text editor to edit the list. It's really simple. It's what I preferred before internet is widely available.
It is still inconvenient. I have to find the text file, and double click it, write something and save it. It doesn't allow collaboration
2. Use stuff like Google docs, evernotes and other online services for documents
Inconvenient.
3. FAST Command Line Database
Convenient for insert and search. Organizing the elements is a pain. Collaboration is possible if more than one person have permission to edit the file. It does what it suppose to do though, really convinent to insert and search.

So if we build something like FAST, but data is stored elsewhere on the web(or the cloud), adding a few more features(deletion and updates), it be epic to use. We will see, seems like a ez project I shall do soon.

Something like this would happen.
I set up a account and password, and I call command line window with some hotkey, then write stuff like
l -a books Mathematical Analysis
and press enter, it insert "Mathematical Analysis" into the list books

Non-related rant: AMS 311 is full! I'm no.1 on the waiting list. I hope someone switch out.