> Having to switch to a terminal and using an alias is too much friction.

Given that the examples are all for 'vim', this appears to have been written from the viewpoint that one is already in a terminal, so there is no switching friction when one's focus is a terminal at the start.

The implementation in the article is less important than the concept of making notes as people in the comments here mentioned Emacs, Google Docs and other tools as well.

Also, you can have ideas or want to make notes when reading a PDF or browsing some documentation, so your editor or terminal are not the only apps from where you want to initiate creating a new note.

Hm, that’s cool. Is your note taking an app part of the menu bar (if you’re using Mac) If so which is it?

Agreed on the global hot key. I use iTerm and it has a global hot key so you can bring it up with a shortcut and then hide it with the same shortcut.

I don't use Mac, but the actual note taking app is not important. The important thing is the global hotkey, so you can make a new note trivially when this global hotkey activates your favorite note taking app.

My hotkey software can also send keypresses to running apps, so beside bringing the note app to the foreground it also starts creating a new note automatically.