I can see Obsidian being popular because it makes notetaking fun and customizable and may motivate people to do it more. But as far as actual productivity goes I can't see any benefit it adds.
Software itself has value (eg, a client-facing web service). Therefore an IDE, which may require an investment to get past the learning curve, can have a productivity benefit as it can make generating software (and thus value) more efficient.
Do notes themselves have value? I would argue not really. For the most part things like "life planners" / "task managers" I've noticed are highly intricate but require considerable upkeep to maintain. Time that can be used to actually generate value.
I’d then argue that software has as much value as notes do. It’s about what you do with it/them, what it/they enable - that counts.
But both software and notes are therefore extremely valuable to the activity of doing.
My notes are my software, heck I even call my note system “LifeOS”, which makes that even more apparent.