Let's start with a radical position. Is something text iff it can be directly encoded in UTF-8? What, then, about symbols that have not yet made there way into Unicode? Like an i dotted with a heart. Does it become text when the Unicode Consortium says so?
Nowadays memes tend to be distributed as (animated) bitmaps. But if we wanted to, we could encode them more efficiently. So are they text?
If 'text' = Unicode then that would also mean that many mathematical expressions (matrices, fractions) are not text. Math texts before symbols were not very readable: http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/brainiac/2014/06/bef...
ASCII-encoded math is not without problems either.
Does 'text' include semantic markup like 'emphasis', 'heading', or 'list-item'? Does it include visual markup like 'italic', 'underline', 'blue', or 'Times New Roman'?
Does 'text' include newline and tab characters? Is it correct to say that newlines and tab characters exist on paper? If they don't then why do we use them to indent blocks of code?
If a sheet of paper with scribblings can be text, then can a bitmap be text too?
Now that I've brought up mathematics, HTML, and code, should we think of text as a linear medium or is it better to think of texts as trees?
What about handritten class notes that include arrows that link together different text fragments? Are these arrows part of the text? Does that mean that texts are directed graphs?
I'm even wondering if the author might actually have meant 'always bet on language', although that seems kind of obvious.
Or perhaps he meant 'don't needlessly throw away information', which is what would be happening if your CMS served pages as HTML image maps.
That is to say, even if we're all inclined to say that text is awesome, which we probably are, we might still be saying quite different things."},"story_title":{"fullyHighlighted":true,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["always","bet","on","text"],"value":"Always bet on text"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"http://graydon2.dreamwidth.org/193447.html"}},"_tags":["comment","author_bluerobotcat","story_8451271"],"author":"bluerobotcat","children":[8452391,8452673,8453468],"comment_text":"'Always bet on text' is a catchy slogan, but the author fails to define 'text'. This is confusing because the post contains a lot of pictures of things that I don't know we would all agree are text.
Let's start with a radical position. Is something text iff it can be directly encoded in UTF-8? What, then, about symbols that have not yet made there way into Unicode? Like an i dotted with a heart. Does it become text when the Unicode Consortium says so?
Nowadays memes tend to be distributed as (animated) bitmaps. But if we wanted to, we could encode them more efficiently. So are they text?
If 'text' = Unicode then that would also mean that many mathematical expressions (matrices, fractions) are not text. Math texts before symbols were not very readable: http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/brainiac/2014/06/bef...
ASCII-encoded math is not without problems either.
Does 'text' include semantic markup like 'emphasis', 'heading', or 'list-item'? Does it include visual markup like 'italic', 'underline', 'blue', or 'Times New Roman'?
Does 'text' include newline and tab characters? Is it correct to say that newlines and tab characters exist on paper? If they don't then why do we use them to indent blocks of code?
If a sheet of paper with scribblings can be text, then can a bitmap be text too?
Now that I've brought up mathematics, HTML, and code, should we think of text as a linear medium or is it better to think of texts as trees?
What about handritten class notes that include arrows that link together different text fragments? Are these arrows part of the text? Does that mean that texts are directed graphs?
I'm even wondering if the author might actually have meant 'always bet on language', although that seems kind of obvious.
Or perhaps he meant 'don't needlessly throw away information', which is what would be happening if your CMS served pages as HTML image maps.
That is to say, even if we're all inclined to say that text is awesome, which we probably are, we might still be saying quite different things.","created_at":"2014-10-14T07:58:44Z","created_at_i":1413273524,"objectID":"8452371","parent_id":8451271,"story_id":8451271,"story_title":"Always bet on text","story_url":"http://graydon2.dreamwidth.org/193447.html","updated_at":"2024-09-19T21:16:36Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"devy"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["always","bet","on","text"],"value":"Graydon Hoare, the creator of the Rust programming language, wrote his seminal piece on text in 2014. In it, he said "text is the most powerful, useful, effective communication technology ever, period."[1] Text is durable.
[1] https://archive.ph/FhG5L (the original either got deleted or login-walled, here is the archived version)
[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?q=always+bet+on+text
[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26164001
[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8451271
[5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10284202
[6] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12815829"},"story_title":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"partial","matchedWords":["text"],"value":"Plain text is still one of the best technologies we have"},"story_url":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"partial","matchedWords":["text"],"value":"https://deadparrotbbs.com/why-plain-text-is-still-one-of-the-best-technologies-we-have/"}},"_tags":["comment","author_devy","story_49968906"],"author":"devy","children":[49972379],"comment_text":"Graydon Hoare, the creator of the Rust programming language, wrote his seminal piece on text in 2014. In it, he said "text is the most powerful, useful, effective communication technology ever, period."[1] Text is durable.
[1] https://archive.ph/FhG5L (the original either got deleted or login-walled, here is the archived version)
[2] https://hn.algolia.com/?q=always+bet+on+text
[3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26164001
[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8451271
[5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10284202
[6] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12815829","created_at":"2026-10-05T19:49:53Z","created_at_i":1791229793,"objectID":"49969705","parent_id":49968906,"story_id":49968906,"story_title":"Plain text is still one of the best technologies we have","story_url":"https://deadparrotbbs.com/why-plain-text-is-still-one-of-the-best-technologies-we-have/","updated_at":"2026-10-05T23:56:29Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"FlyingSnake"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["always","bet","on","text"],"value":"Text is Lindy. It has withstood the test of time and it's as ubiquitous as SQL or TCP/IP.
Reminds me of this decade old post (and discussion) by Graydon Hoare, "Always bet on text".
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8451271
[2]: https://graydon2.dreamwidth.org/193447.html"},"story_title":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"partial","matchedWords":["text"],"value":"Plain text has been around for decades and it\u2019s here to stay"},"story_url":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"partial","matchedWords":["text"],"value":"https://unsung.aresluna.org/plain-text-has-been-around-for-decades-and-its-here-to-stay/"}},"_tags":["comment","author_FlyingSnake","story_47897681"],"author":"FlyingSnake","comment_text":"Text is Lindy. It has withstood the test of time and it's as ubiquitous as SQL or TCP/IP.
Reminds me of this decade old post (and discussion) by Graydon Hoare, "Always bet on text".
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8451271
[2]: https://graydon2.dreamwidth.org/193447.html","created_at":"2026-04-25T14:35:25Z","created_at_i":1777127725,"objectID":"47901839","parent_id":47897681,"story_id":47897681,"story_title":"Plain text has been around for decades and it\u2019s here to stay","story_url":"https://unsung.aresluna.org/plain-text-has-been-around-for-decades-and-its-here-to-stay/","updated_at":"2026-05-01T20:57:41Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"stevenjgarner"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["always","bet","on","text"],"value":"From an information theory perspective, "Always bet on text" is a plea for symbolic efficiency. It argues that while binary or visual formats might have higher bandwidth, they often have lower meaning-per-bit for the complex, abstract logic that runs civilization. Text is the most entropy-resistant, highly-compressible, and universally-decodable format we have ever invented."},"story_title":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["always","bet","on","text"],"value":"Always bet on text (2014)"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://graydon2.dreamwidth.org/193447.html"}},"_tags":["comment","author_stevenjgarner","story_46397379"],"author":"stevenjgarner","children":[46400666],"comment_text":"From an information theory perspective, "Always bet on text" is a plea for symbolic efficiency. It argues that while binary or visual formats might have higher bandwidth, they often have lower meaning-per-bit for the complex, abstract logic that runs civilization. Text is the most entropy-resistant, highly-compressible, and universally-decodable format we have ever invented.","created_at":"2025-12-27T09:11:39Z","created_at_i":1766826699,"objectID":"46400390","parent_id":46397379,"story_id":46397379,"story_title":"Always bet on text (2014)","story_url":"https://graydon2.dreamwidth.org/193447.html","updated_at":"2026-03-05T23:13:42Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"iLemming"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["always","bet","on","text"],"value":""The Idea" here I think is in the revelation of the ultimate preeminence of text in a programmer's life. Plain text deserves our utmost attention, yet many programmers overlook its significance and rarely give it deliberate thought.
"Text can convey ideas with a precisely controlled level of ambiguity and precision, implied context and elaborated content, unmatched by anything else."\u00b9
Vim-navigation provides a mental and spatial "language" that enables efficient text manipulation through keyboard input. Rather than forcing your brain to process raw character chunks on the screen, it allows you to reason about text in meaningful units: letters, words, paragraphs, tags, nested structures - e.g., "delete everything between parentheses" - and more.
Sadly, we keep moving away from plain text conventions, making our work increasingly complicated. Have you ever tried quickly extracting text interwoven with code from Slack into your editor? Ever gotten mad when websites won't let you copy the content or use colors and fonts that make it unreadable?
I implore every programmer to reject the status quo and reclaim agency over text interactions - always find ways to deal with text on your own terms. For instance, I'm reading this thread and typing this very comment in my editor. Why wouldn't I? It has all the tools I need for it - vim-navigation, thesaurus, dictionaries, translation, etymology lookup, LLMs, and tons of other tools.
Final point: do not assume code is somehow different. Code simply is structured text. Don't try to find perfect "code editor", prioritize plain text. Good plain text editors are the best code editors, but even the most sophisticated IDE at some points brings mostly frustration if it cannot nicely handle the simplicity of plain text.
___
\u00b9. Graydon Hoare. Always bet on text - https://graydon2.dreamwidth.org/193447.html"},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Tinkering is a way to acquire good taste"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://seated.ro/blog/tinkering-a-lost-art"}},"_tags":["comment","author_iLemming","story_45739499"],"author":"iLemming","comment_text":""The Idea" here I think is in the revelation of the ultimate preeminence of text in a programmer's life. Plain text deserves our utmost attention, yet many programmers overlook its significance and rarely give it deliberate thought.
"Text can convey ideas with a precisely controlled level of ambiguity and precision, implied context and elaborated content, unmatched by anything else."\u00b9
Vim-navigation provides a mental and spatial "language" that enables efficient text manipulation through keyboard input. Rather than forcing your brain to process raw character chunks on the screen, it allows you to reason about text in meaningful units: letters, words, paragraphs, tags, nested structures - e.g., "delete everything between parentheses" - and more.
Sadly, we keep moving away from plain text conventions, making our work increasingly complicated. Have you ever tried quickly extracting text interwoven with code from Slack into your editor? Ever gotten mad when websites won't let you copy the content or use colors and fonts that make it unreadable?
I implore every programmer to reject the status quo and reclaim agency over text interactions - always find ways to deal with text on your own terms. For instance, I'm reading this thread and typing this very comment in my editor. Why wouldn't I? It has all the tools I need for it - vim-navigation, thesaurus, dictionaries, translation, etymology lookup, LLMs, and tons of other tools.
Final point: do not assume code is somehow different. Code simply is structured text. Don't try to find perfect "code editor", prioritize plain text. Good plain text editors are the best code editors, but even the most sophisticated IDE at some points brings mostly frustration if it cannot nicely handle the simplicity of plain text.
___
\u00b9. Graydon Hoare. Always bet on text - https://graydon2.dreamwidth.org/193447.html","created_at":"2025-10-29T16:04:13Z","created_at_i":1761753853,"objectID":"45748719","parent_id":45742919,"story_id":45739499,"story_title":"Tinkering is a way to acquire good taste","story_url":"https://seated.ro/blog/tinkering-a-lost-art","updated_at":"2026-03-05T22:57:53Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"iLemming"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["always","bet","on","text"],"value":"Typical reaction from someone who has no clue. Emacs isn\u2019t a \u201chammer\u201d; it's more like \u201cglue\u201d - you don't have to do everything _with_ Emacs, but it can definitely mediate and delegate specific tasks to more specialized tools - it can give you the sense of doing everything _through_ Emacs.
Why would anyone do that? Because plain text rocks.
> There is no equivalent in any other communication technology for the social, communicative, cognitive and reflective complexity \u00b9
And there's simply nothing better today than Emacs for dealing with the plain text. Neovim comes close, but still can't match it.
__
\u00b9 Graydon Hoare: Always bet on text https://graydon2.dreamwidth.org/193447.html"},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Emacs as your video-trimming tool"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://xenodium.com/emacs-as-your-video-trimming-tool"}},"_tags":["comment","author_iLemming","story_44953316"],"author":"iLemming","children":[44955111,44955597],"comment_text":"Typical reaction from someone who has no clue. Emacs isn\u2019t a \u201chammer\u201d; it's more like \u201cglue\u201d - you don't have to do everything _with_ Emacs, but it can definitely mediate and delegate specific tasks to more specialized tools - it can give you the sense of doing everything _through_ Emacs.
Why would anyone do that? Because plain text rocks.
> There is no equivalent in any other communication technology for the social, communicative, cognitive and reflective complexity \u00b9
And there's simply nothing better today than Emacs for dealing with the plain text. Neovim comes close, but still can't match it.
__
\u00b9 Graydon Hoare: Always bet on text https://graydon2.dreamwidth.org/193447.html","created_at":"2025-08-19T18:18:37Z","created_at_i":1755627517,"objectID":"44954565","parent_id":44953541,"story_id":44953316,"story_title":"Emacs as your video-trimming tool","story_url":"https://xenodium.com/emacs-as-your-video-trimming-tool","updated_at":"2026-03-05T22:31:29Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"iLemming"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["always","bet","on","text"],"value":"Rainer is indeed great and he also published an Udemy course on the topic. I've never tried it, by the time he released it I already was well-versed in Org-mode.
He does a good job of showing some interesting features of Org-mode, yet he doesn't provide any insights of how cross-referencing things in a real workplace scenario may look like, how does Org-mode/Emacs help you to communicate with your colleagues. How it allows you to investigate failing http endpoint or document some investigation where you need to dig into a sql db. How Org integrates with other packages, like Anki, Pomodoro or Noter (for pdf annotations).
Wilson's vids also great, but that too, doesn't work as "marketing material", it's mostly "preaching to the choir" and unlikely to bring attention outside of the Emacs-world, still, those videos are very good.
The point I'm trying to make \u2014 there are great videos and tutorials for specific things \u2014 Org-mode, text-editing features of Emacs, version control, etc. There aren't many vids to demo "the point of Emacs holistically", with the emphasis on "Always bet on text" https://graydon2.dreamwidth.org/193447.html, I'm just gonna throw a random quote from that great article: "Text can convey ideas with a precisely controlled level of ambiguity and precision, implied context and elaborated content, unmatched by anything else."
That is the greatest selling point of Emacs. That's what actually makes a huge difference. When it comes to manipulating text - fetching, processing, searching through, dicing, slicing, summarizing, converting, publishing, etc. \u2014 Emacs truly is the unmatched king of that prose."},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"Ditching Obsidian and building my own"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://amberwilliams.io/blogs/building-my-own-pkms"}},"_tags":["comment","author_iLemming","story_44022448"],"author":"iLemming","comment_text":"Rainer is indeed great and he also published an Udemy course on the topic. I've never tried it, by the time he released it I already was well-versed in Org-mode.
He does a good job of showing some interesting features of Org-mode, yet he doesn't provide any insights of how cross-referencing things in a real workplace scenario may look like, how does Org-mode/Emacs help you to communicate with your colleagues. How it allows you to investigate failing http endpoint or document some investigation where you need to dig into a sql db. How Org integrates with other packages, like Anki, Pomodoro or Noter (for pdf annotations).
Wilson's vids also great, but that too, doesn't work as "marketing material", it's mostly "preaching to the choir" and unlikely to bring attention outside of the Emacs-world, still, those videos are very good.
The point I'm trying to make \u2014 there are great videos and tutorials for specific things \u2014 Org-mode, text-editing features of Emacs, version control, etc. There aren't many vids to demo "the point of Emacs holistically", with the emphasis on "Always bet on text" https://graydon2.dreamwidth.org/193447.html, I'm just gonna throw a random quote from that great article: "Text can convey ideas with a precisely controlled level of ambiguity and precision, implied context and elaborated content, unmatched by anything else."
That is the greatest selling point of Emacs. That's what actually makes a huge difference. When it comes to manipulating text - fetching, processing, searching through, dicing, slicing, summarizing, converting, publishing, etc. \u2014 Emacs truly is the unmatched king of that prose.","created_at":"2025-05-22T21:38:38Z","created_at_i":1747949918,"objectID":"44067389","parent_id":44048360,"story_id":44022448,"story_title":"Ditching Obsidian and building my own","story_url":"https://amberwilliams.io/blogs/building-my-own-pkms","updated_at":"2025-06-05T22:45:40Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"elliotec"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["always","bet","on","text"],"value":"This is not how YouTube, or people, or virality work though.
The fact there is some useful educational content is a byproduct of the machine of lucrative trash of the capitalist hellhole spiral, and the written word will always prevail comparatively. You can always bet on text. https://graydon2.dreamwidth.org/193447.html
Also, as you likely know, YouTube is owned by Google so it\u2019s very silly to say it\u2019s \u201cmore important.\u201d"},"story_title":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"How to succeed in MrBeast production (Leaked PDF)"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://simonwillison.net/2024/Sep/15/how-to-succeed-in-mrbeast-production/"}},"_tags":["comment","author_elliotec","story_41549649"],"author":"elliotec","children":[41553923],"comment_text":"This is not how YouTube, or people, or virality work though.
The fact there is some useful educational content is a byproduct of the machine of lucrative trash of the capitalist hellhole spiral, and the written word will always prevail comparatively. You can always bet on text. https://graydon2.dreamwidth.org/193447.html
Also, as you likely know, YouTube is owned by Google so it\u2019s very silly to say it\u2019s \u201cmore important.\u201d","created_at":"2024-09-16T03:11:13Z","created_at_i":1726456273,"objectID":"41552412","parent_id":41552221,"story_id":41549649,"story_title":"How to succeed in MrBeast production (Leaked PDF)","story_url":"https://simonwillison.net/2024/Sep/15/how-to-succeed-in-mrbeast-production/","updated_at":"2025-08-14T22:32:02Z"},{"_highlightResult":{"author":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"kragen"},"comment_text":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"full","matchedWords":["always","bet","on","text"],"value":"if you have a problem with gnu/linux (as opposed to android) you can usually find the solution on stack overflow, server fault, or superuser, but the solution you find there is going to be a textual command line, not a gui. gpt-4 can tell you how to solve the problem, but only using a textual command line, not a gui. text is the most powerful, useful, effective communication technology ever, period. always bet on text: https://graydon2.dreamwidth.org/193447.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40909185 documents that this is actually also true for microsoft windows
on the other hand, 'always bet on text' doesn't mean 'always bet on editing your command line with inconsistent control-character commands in a mode where clicking with the mouse doesn't do anything'"},"story_title":{"fullyHighlighted":false,"matchLevel":"partial","matchedWords":["text"],"value":"Entering text in the terminal is complicated"},"story_url":{"matchLevel":"none","matchedWords":[],"value":"https://jvns.ca/blog/2024/07/08/readline/"}},"_tags":["comment","author_kragen","story_40907581"],"author":"kragen","children":[40911421,40911475],"comment_text":"if you have a problem with gnu/linux (as opposed to android) you can usually find the solution on stack overflow, server fault, or superuser, but the solution you find there is going to be a textual command line, not a gui. gpt-4 can tell you how to solve the problem, but only using a textual command line, not a gui. text is the most powerful, useful, effective communication technology ever, period. always bet on text: https://graydon2.dreamwidth.org/193447.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40909185 documents that this is actually also true for microsoft windows
on the other hand, 'always bet on text' doesn't mean 'always bet on editing your command line with inconsistent control-character commands in a mode where clicking with the mouse doesn't do anything'","created_at":"2024-07-08T23:18:16Z","created_at_i":1720480696,"objectID":"40910825","parent_id":40908398,"story_id":40907581,"story_title":"Entering text in the terminal is complicated","story_url":"https://jvns.ca/blog/2024/07/08/readline/","updated_at":"2024-09-20T17:22:27Z"}],"hitsPerPage":20,"nbHits":326,"nbPages":17,"page":0,"params":"query=always+bet+on+text&advancedSyntax=true&analyticsTags=backend","processingTimeMS":109,"processingTimingsMS":{"_request":{"queue":119,"roundTrip":21},"afterFetch":{"format":{"highlighting":1,"total":1}},"fetch":{"query":18,"scanning":89,"total":108},"total":110},"query":"always bet on text","serverTimeMS":231}