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Ask HN: Examples of reliable software you enjoy using

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Re: Ask HN: Examples of reliable software you enjoy using

#71

Post by thedudemabry »

Synergy. It's a keyboard and mouse sharing client/server application that runs on every platform I use.

I don't know if better alternatives exist because it has just been rock-solid for the last 12 years that I've been using it. I've used it in multi-monitor and machine desktop setups (e.g. an Apple laptop paired with a Windows desktop and linux desktop for enterprisey cubicle development), as well as to let me drive my gaming and media PC from my couch using an Apple laptop.

I was a bit bummed that the pricing model went from free-as-in-beer to free-as-in-speech, but couldn't be happier to pay $10 for a lifetime license.

I feel it belongs in this thread because even when I've neglected to upgrade various machines, or upgraded OSs on machines with the application installed, it just continues to hum along. I can count on one hand the number of times I've had to deal with any problems in any capacity.

Re: Ask HN: Examples of reliable software you enjoy using

#74

Post by tombrossman »

Hands-down winner for me is Radio Tray. Simple, works as advertised, and it's running pretty much 100% of the time my computer is on. It has never crashed. Very lightweight too, and the config file is simple enough that a quick glance at it in a text editor is all you need to make customizations faster than using the GUI preferences.

A very close second is the ext4 filesystem, but I don't know if this qualifies as software. I've done all kind of stupid things when formatting or unplugging drives and have never lost data. Full-disk encryption on everything and never a problem. SO reliable. I was doing a full backup to two separate drives at once, one external and one SATA internal. The power went out and I wasn't using a UPS. When the power came back on, everything was still fine but I was worried about data corruption so I plugged in yet another, my last good external drive with a known good copy of everything to compare against. Then the power went out again! I didn't even shout or curse, that's how mad I was. No data loss though, everything resumed from mid-backup and happily continued.

Re: Ask HN: Examples of reliable software you enjoy using

#75

Post by numlocked »

fn1 wrote: post #25

Postgresql. Such a marvel of reliability and good design. All features just logically and consistently work with each other.

Agree with this. I will regularly write queries plugging together all sorts of odd features in odd ways and it'll just run, run fast, and give me the results I want. Totally amazing.

Re: Ask HN: Examples of reliable software you enjoy using

#76

Post by eel »

Reliable: vim, Microsoft Word/Excel, SQLite, tmux, GNU coreutils, svn

I think most would agree with most of the items, although svn warrants an explanation. I prefer the paradigm of git, but svn always impresses me with its ability to handle large repositories and large files out of the box without falling over.

Re: Ask HN: Examples of reliable software you enjoy using

#80

Post by AnimalMuppet »

gshx wrote: post #6
PaulHoule wrote: post #2

IntelliJ Idea is head and shoulders better than many other IDEs, particularly Eclipse in the reliability department.

Care to give some examples how? For me, Eclipse has remained very stable. Maybe we are using them for different languages and/or things.

IntelliJ lets you do a lot more from the keyboard. It's suggestions for code completion are very useful. It's amazing to see the code almost writing itself, several times faster than you can type!
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