Ask HN: Examples of reliable software you enjoy using

Files auto save, so a crash, or even accidental close will not cause you to lose anything. Also handles massive files, which is nice. On top of being a nice, very configurable code editor,

On the server side of things: nginx, haproxy, redis, memcached, cron, logrotate, Linux

And controversially (probably since I've learned their quirks): MySQL, Nagios.

They all just... work. I use these tools to set up a server, and after configured, the VM usually goes down before they do.

On the flip side of things, tools I have to use and highly resent their lack of reliability: collectd, Docker, Safari/IE/Firefox/Chrome, OSX.

I used to think bash was on that list... it seems relatively responsive and predictable. I use it all the time.

But then I realized how often bash has weird issues -- like completion hanging, or inexplicable inability to complete (this could be due to the distro though). Or it just seems easy to get it in a bad state by hitting the wrong keys, or dumping a binary file to the terminal.

And recently I have been looking through the bash source code, and it's a bit horrifying. The reliability is done by brute force of special cases over decades, not by good design.

I like the semantics of the shell language, in that it lets me get things done fast. But I don't like the syntax or the implementation I happen to use. bash is pretty complete, but not well implemented.