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Ask HN: What software sparks joy when using?

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Re: Ask HN: What software sparks joy when using?

#71
Kanboard: https://kanboard.org/ is a lightweight Kanban project management tool, it might not have every feature under the sun but it's the most snappy project management tool I've ever used, looks simple and runs well. I honestly love it, what a nice thing to have.

MobaXTerm: https://mobaxterm.mobatek.net/ this one is a bit more Windows centric but I ended up paying for it and replaced mRemoteNg and PuTTY with it, it's even better than Remmina or whatever Linux has to offer - you can manage SSH/RDP/VNC/... sessions, input across multiple sessions side by side and it just simplifies things a lot (jump host support, a port forwarding too and so much more).

GitKraken: https://www.gitkraken.com/ also a piece of software that I paid for, this one actually makes using Git pleasant, feels better to use than SourceTree and Git Cola (even though that latter is wonderfully lightweight, too) and honestly I prefer that to the CLI nowadays.

Most modern text editors and IDEs: I personally pay for JetBrains IDEs but also like Visual Studio Code as a text editor and both have helped me immensely, they're reasonably performant when you have the RAM, look nice, often give you suggestions about how to improve your code and also have a plethora of plugins in their ecosystems. Nowadays I unapologetically use LLMs as well and overall it feels like I have these great tools and cool autocomplete (that is sometimes a bit silly and wrong) at my disposal, that makes me happy.

Kdenlive: https://kdenlive.org/ imagine if there was a successor to Windows Movie Maker, though something that gets most of the important stuff out of Sony Vegas, except is also completely free and works on most platforms. Kdenlive is all of that and also somehow quite pleasant to use, I actually prefer it to DaVinci resolve. There is a bit of a learning curve to any piece of software like this, but everything mostly makes sense in this one.

Linux Mint with Cinnamon: https://www.linuxmint.com/ as far as desktop OSes go it's familiar (Ubuntu without snaps by default), whereas the UI feels both snappy, doesn't use too much resources and is actually pretty to look at.

Gitea: https://about.gitea.com/ I still use this for my personal Git repositories and integrating with CI systems and it's lightweight, looks good and just feels pleasant to use. Previously I self-hosted GitLab and constantly ran into resource exhaustion as well as doubts about the next update is going to corrupt all of my data and break (it did), so now I use Gitea instead.

Drone CI: https://www.drone.io/ a container native CI solution that I can also self host. It's container oriented, integrates with Gitea nicely, is similarly nice to GitLab CI and doesn't cause me headaches like Jenkins would.

Docker: https://www.docker.com/ yes, even Docker desktop. It just makes working with containers really pleasant and predictable, even when something like Podman also exists (and also is great). I don't know, I feel like Docker really saved me from having brittle legacy environments, even self-contained containers with health checks and resource limits with still the same brittle code inside of those make me feel way more safe.

Re: Ask HN: What software sparks joy when using?

#75

I like writing HTML + vanilla JavaScript with zero dependencies in any simple text editor. Notepad++ on Windows, gedit or vim elsewhere.

While Python may be an easy language, Javascript may be the easiest to get things running. It's just there before you even start downloading what other languages need. Just press F12 and REPL away. I use the JS console as a calculator on steroids among other things. It's nice that it has the C family syntax, which lets me interactively test expressions before using them on non-browser code, without the prerequisite of projects, files or other boilerplate.

Re: Ask HN: What software sparks joy when using?

#76
For iOS apps:

Feeeed - completely customizable RSS reader with no data collection.

Widgy - Custom widgets on iOS. Not talking like "mmmm widget green now" I'm talking custom javascript in the widget, API calls, custom symbols, colors, transparency, sizing, whatever you need. The complexity of photoshop almost.

iSH: Alpine terminal emulator. Its surprising what you can do with it.

For desktop:

Tesseract: FOSS OCR(optical character recognition). Can convert text on images to actual encoded text.

OpenRGB: FOSS interaction with a diverse set of RGB devices

MultiMC: Minecraft Java edition custom launcher

Re: Ask HN: What software sparks joy when using?

#77
Modern software? Not many. Excalidraw and Shottr (screenshots) are so easy and intuitive, I really appreciate them.

Historically: BeOS, WebOS from Palm, and any BBS software ever. The joy of hearing people call in never faded, even as the world moved on.

Re: Ask HN: What software sparks joy when using?

#78
Remember the Milk. There’s something very satisfying adding tasks within only one line with its syntax. I also like how it never tries to impose it flows and how much it’s customisable to your needs. Very simple yet Powerfull. Last but not least, team never feel the need to add the new hip features or just change everything to justify subscription. One of the best app I ever used.

Re: Ask HN: What software sparks joy when using?

#80

In no particular order: Prologue [0] - iOS Audiobook player, used Plex as a media source Overcast [1] - iOS Podcast player CleanShotX [2] - macOS screenshot/video/gif capture with annotation Drafts [3] - iOS/macOS note taking tool Paprika [4] - Cross platform recipe app YNAB [5] - "You Need A Budget" - web/mobile budgeting app 1Password [6] - Cross platform password manager Carrot Weather [7] - iOS weather app Color…

I’ll add Rectangle (window manager) as a great utility for Mac. The free version works great and doesn’t nag me at all to upgrade. https://rectangleapp.com/

Rectangle (and Magnet) are both good but I find their vertical monitor support lackluster. I know Magnet sort of supports it but I don’t like its hotkeys. Phoenix is great cause I can do whatever I want/need. I have a hotkey that reorgs all my windows where I like them and even accounts for the 2 different locations I work at. That coupled with displayplacer makes moving between different setups a breeze.

If you don’t have vertical monitors then yes, rectangle/magnet are awesome.

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