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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

#251

awk, grep, sed, and these days I add jq to my standard tool belt. I also really enjoy fish as my shell language of choice. Languages, runtimes, etc come and go but these programs remain as useful as they were 19 years ago when I first learned about them.

jq sounds like something I was looking for a while ago. Just installed it (apt install jq), let's see if a situation presents itself to try it out soon.

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

#252
post #206

Let's see... stuff I have been using for around 20 years and still use today: * Emacs * Postgres * GCC * Apache web server * Linux - although it's big enough in scope that it does have its issues from time to time.

+1 for Emacs. eshell is my main command line and interactive shell, and since GNU Emacs 24 I have not touched a terminal emulator other than ansi-term.

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

#253

Spectacle ( https://www.spectacleapp.com/ ) Github: https://github.com/eczarny/spectacle Easily resize and arrange windows on a mac - move windows between monitors, make them full size, or half size, anchor them left / right, etc. It's open source, it just works, and you'll wish every new Mac you interact with had it installed by default.

Heh. So many times I cmd+alt+left on someone elses mac and it doesn't work and I just :(

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

#254
post #8

haproxy and redis are the two that come to mind. Not necessarily because they make me happy , but they never seem to make me angry or sad. Which with most infrastructure software is rare.

> Not necessarily because they make me happy, but they never seem to make me angry or sad.

I suppose those are the criteria to look for in a thread asking for "reliable software". Couldn't have worded it any better though!

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

#255

PuTTY Saved my ass a lot of times when I wasn't around a linux machine.

Putty has some pretty strange design choices. They coupled the terminal emulator and the SSH client, and (at least used to have) really bad default configuration (blue color was unreadable, windows codepage instead of utf-8, etc. etc.). Now that Mintty exists, I prefer to use it + openssh on Windows.

And the config ux is really ...weird.

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

#257

Reaper DAW. Tiny executable, rock-solid reliability, low RAM and CPU usage, effortlessly configurable. It's closed source so it's just a gut feel but it gives the impression of being 'well made' under the hood. I call it my 'Vim of audio'. It was written by the creator of Winamp.

Agreed. I've used nearly everything, in professional and home environments, and REAPER is a compelling alternative to all of them. ProTools might be better for some special use cases...like audio for film and video, and post-production. But, for general purpose multi-track recording, REAPER is a practically perfect implementation of the traditional DAW model. It's so fast, so lightweight, and so powerful, and priced fairly.

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

#258

Total Commander. I've been using it since the first versions that came out for Windows 3.1 and it provided a smooth Windows transition from Norton Commander for DOS. The changelog goes back all the way to 2002, but it's been there for waaay longer. ( http://ghisler.com/whatsnew.htm ) I hope he continues to make a healthy income from it. It's litterally the best piece of shareware in the world in my eyes, that i've ha…

I've seen this program come up a few times in the last couple of years - but every time I look at it I can't see a use case that sticks out. I've looked through the FAQ and installed it and I just can't seem to get why I'd use that opposed to Windows Explorer, 7Zip, and WinSCP. Can you share why you find it useful? Thanks!

Stuff I use daily: - extremely quick copy pasting and moving between two folders - filter by extension - dir bookmarks - extremely quick compressing - easy and simple enough file diffs - command line from every folder - fast navigation using smart search of file in current dir - pretty good search within folder - viewer for text files(useful when need to read the last couple of lines from 10GB log file)

It is somewhat more/easier configurable than mc or FAR. I know you can get dozens of plugins for all these actions but totalcmd has the right amount of stuff I need and is not bloated. Been using it for almost 15 years.

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

#259
post #135

Reaper DAW. Tiny executable, rock-solid reliability, low RAM and CPU usage, effortlessly configurable. It's closed source so it's just a gut feel but it gives the impression of being 'well made' under the hood. I call it my 'Vim of audio'. It was written by the creator of Winamp.

Haven't tried Reaper, but Ardour is pretty solid for me these days.

I try to use Ardour every couple of years (and I think I still have a monthly donation setup for Ardour). So far, I've always gone back to Reaper. Partly that's because audio on Linux still kinda sucks, and often requires a lot of kernel fiddling and other crap, but partly it's because Ardour is bigger, slower, and generally less capable than REAPER. But, it's been a couple of years, so I'm due for another stab at using Ardour for my primary DAW.

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

#260

Total Commander. I've been using it since the first versions that came out for Windows 3.1 and it provided a smooth Windows transition from Norton Commander for DOS. The changelog goes back all the way to 2002, but it's been there for waaay longer. ( http://ghisler.com/whatsnew.htm ) I hope he continues to make a healthy income from it. It's litterally the best piece of shareware in the world in my eyes, that i've ha…

I've seen this program come up a few times in the last couple of years - but every time I look at it I can't see a use case that sticks out. I've looked through the FAQ and installed it and I just can't seem to get why I'd use that opposed to Windows Explorer, 7Zip, and WinSCP. Can you share why you find it useful? Thanks!

I guess it only becomes a real power tool if you learn to navigate and harness the power of the 2 side-by-side panels by keyboard.

Long story short, let me sum up some of my favorite features:

    - Tab to switch between panels
    - Navigate with arrow keys through the files list 
      (very handy if you have it on 'brief' view, especially since you can walk 
      through whole directories with left/right arrow until you hit the '..')
    - CTRL + F1/ CTRL+F2 to select drive for the left or right panel
    - Using any type of packer (zip,arj,7z, etc) as a directory by just hitting 
      enter on it to see the files inside, view them, extract, add and remove
    - CTRL + Pagedown to navigate even into some packaged files that aren't 
      normally accessible as folders (like .msi)
    - F-Keys with a clear indicator at the bottom to move and copy files, insert 
      to select and move to the next file
    - F3 for an all you can eat file viewer that can switch to different view modes
      like HEX by pressing 1,2,3,4 and doesn't bork on large files
    - F4 launches your favorite editor
    - Hit space on a directory to compute the full size recursively 
    - ALT+F7 for find-in-files and fast file search
    - The most powerful multi-rename tool you could ever wish for in the file menu
    - Built-In FTP Client (CTRL + F) with a favorite list, queue list 
      and resume from queue list.
    - Download any random file (with resume and queue) using CTRL+N (HTTP/FTP)
    - Plugin support to enhance the thing with stuff like SFTP/FTPS support, 
      which you can open from the 'network' drive
    - Background copy for most operations (in it's own thread, and with pause)
    - Double click the file path at the top of the panel for a popup hotlist where
      you can add favorite jump-to spots
    - CTRL + Arrow key opposite to the current panel opens the folder under the 
      cursor in the opposite panel
    - CTRL + UP arrow on a folder opens it in a new tab (which you can even lock to
      persist them or have handy nav points)
    - Numpad + to select files in a folder according to a wildcard
    - Numpad * inverts currrent selection or selects all
    - Pack some files using CTRL + F5 on a selection
There's just so much goodness that this list could go on and on for way too long. Double Commander comes close on Linux, but there's no thing like TotalCMD for me when i'm on Windows.
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