Laptops. Ok, I know thats hardware, but I write software, and they made a 10x difference.
Ask HN: What are some “10x” software product innovations you have experienced?
521–530 of 818 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are some “10x” software product innovations you have experienced?
#5221. DOCKER I don't hear "works on my machine" nearly as much nowadays. Everyone is running the same code in the same environment. It's all there under source control. Now I can get a project running on a different machine in a few minutes, without any special instructions. That also applies to my colleagues, or people looking at my GitHub projects. My software's interface with the host machine is clearly defined, so t…
What I like about docker is that everything comes from one Dockerfile
Re: Ask HN: What are some “10x” software product innovations you have experienced?
#523[deleted]
Re: Ask HN: What are some “10x” software product innovations you have experienced?
#524Mathematica
Even just using it to simplify equations was worth the asking price.
Re: Ask HN: What are some “10x” software product innovations you have experienced?
#525Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's interesting that this is kind of a constant .1x * 10x = 1 cycle we repeatedly go through with new platforms. We rarely realize the cost of a new development platform in the fact that we often have to start from zero with documentation, tools, communities, etc. Tools are arguably the easiest to realize on day 1, when all of a sudden you can't set a breakpoint. So it's really .1x development in many ways until som…
Some day, before I die, I hope that when I say "If it doesn't work for the developers, then soon it won't work for the customers," and people will know what the hell I'm talking about.
That's why Windows Phone didn't go far, right? Developers were spending so much time on iOS and Android that few companies were willing to spend time on another platform.
Re: Ask HN: What are some “10x” software product innovations you have experienced?
#526- SSH. Maybe not in terms of performance or efficiency, but before SSH, we were using telnet everywhere and just sending passwords in plaintext all over the internet. Plus, you could give someone your public key and they could give you access to a server instead of the "here's a temporary password, change it as soon as you log in" approach. - Perl. This was at the time when the other languages available to me as a st…
> apt-get. I saw a joke the other day that went something like: "What, is your grandma so senile that she can't type ./configure; make; make install" ? Installing software on linux truly sucked before package managers.
When I installed my first Linux (Red Hat 9) I was trying to install Gaim on it. I was trying different methods and I managed to install it by source compilation but not through rpm.
Re: Ask HN: What are some “10x” software product innovations you have experienced?
#527The GNU C/C++ compiler. Working on a game console with a proprietary compiler that let you pick: a) 16 floating point registers and 32 bit pointers or b) 32 floating point registers and 64 bit pointers. And also a shitty solution for a cpu bug. Or, GNU compiler! I'll have all my floating point registers, but 32 bit pointers, oh, and can we handle the bug without just adding a nop every bloody time it might happen? Thanks! It had been around a long time by that point, but it made a 10x difference on our project.
Re: Ask HN: What are some “10x” software product innovations you have experienced?
#528SPARK:
At the time there were some motions towards a "better MapReduce," Scalding (ooh weee that had a learning curve) comes to mind, but I feel like Spark really lowered the bar for getting big data tooling and the ecosystem into mid level and pre-ipo orgs.
Re: Ask HN: What are some “10x” software product innovations you have experienced?
#529Roon.
Roon is a home audio platform. It plays on all the devices in my house.
The 10x difference is during parties. The iPad with the interface on it gets passed around and people queue up music they like, but also get to read about what is playing. It gets magical when people pipe up "Well, if you like that then try this..."
I don't know why make such a difference compared to an iPad with Apple Music, or Spotify. My guess would be the music reviews, and its "take music seriously" presentation, encourages people to think about the music as more than just background noise? Anyway. Very happy.
Re: Ask HN: What are some “10x” software product innovations you have experienced?
#530- SSH. Maybe not in terms of performance or efficiency, but before SSH, we were using telnet everywhere and just sending passwords in plaintext all over the internet. Plus, you could give someone your public key and they could give you access to a server instead of the "here's a temporary password, change it as soon as you log in" approach. - Perl. This was at the time when the other languages available to me as a st…
> apt-get. I saw a joke the other day that went something like: "What, is your grandma so senile that she can't type ./configure; make; make install" ? Installing software on linux truly sucked before package managers.
> Installing software on linux truly sucked before package managers.
Although UN-installing software was possibly even worse!