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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

#652

Post by ivanyv »

repeek wrote: post #208

1Password on Mac - phenomenal UX, all around joy to use Not as pleased with the Windows version, but it's serviceable

Absolutely. I used LastPass for a long time when it first came out. Then I tried Dashlane to see if it sucked less (it does in some ways, but still sucks). 1Password is a joy to use compared to those two.

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

#654

Post by LarryMade2 »

Inkscape - May not be AI but it does a great job for what it is - recent improvements have set it in a class of its own.

Eclipse - slow probably, reliable yes.

Thunderbird - Just works

A Good Text Editor - (choose your flavor) When word processors or other text tools just get in the way - you can clear up a lot of frustration with a decent text editor.

Meld - Great file & directory comparator/text editor

MacOS/OSX - compared to other OSs Mac "just works" (though over the decades it doesn't "just work" always as well as it had - but still "just works" better than most for those not OS savvy.)

Linux - may be a bit of a struggle to get up to speed initially but it doesn't let you down

Ubuntu - Some years are good some are bad but even on the bad years the community support will get you up and running and once you are there you're good for a few years.

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

#655

Post by guitarbill »

akkartik wrote: post #475
guitarbill wrote: post #436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agree with the list and bash. I switched to fish because of this and never looked back. Although tmux isn't perfect when there's a lot of scrolling output on account of it being a terminal multiplexer, the only decent replacement I've found is terminator, which is a terminal emulator. But I hate the terminator key bindings, and it doesn't have a option for screen/tmux style shortcuts.

What's wrong with tmux scrollbar buffers?

Nothing. However because tmux is a terminal emulator running in a single terminal, the whole thing can freeze with loads of output if you don't rate limit [1]. My understanding (and experience) is that terminator emulates several terminals, so one pane freezing doesn't affect the others. I still prefer tmux, but I do find the different approaches interesting.

[1] https://superuser.com/questions/417556/is-there-any-way-to-p...

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

#656

Post by pdm55 »

reitanqild wrote: post #234
eel wrote: post #76

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.

Word has destroyed lots of work for my ex-colleagues. Also it was such a major pain when I had work with two other students on my final project that I ended up doing the last major changes in Open Office writer before reopening in Word to finish off the last details. Admittedly I guess this had a lot to do with how some people don't want to learn how to use styles but Word didn't help either.

Word was fine for my PhD. My supervisor from those times - now 80 and still collaborating with scientists from around the world - has written hundreds of papers with it. I think I can speak for him when I say that over the last 30 years he has found it a far more reliable option than the typewriter and carbon paper he used to write his own PhD in the 1960s.

I frequently use Excel for calculations. Just the simplest way to check I have entered the correct numbers.

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

#658

Post by random778 »

rsync wrote: post #622
rmsaksida wrote: post #446

There have been lots of Windows and Mac OS replies to this thread, so here's a few Linux ones for a change: i3wm. I've experimented with many tiling window managers over the years but none of them got me to switch. i3, however, is something else. It's extremely simple, intuitive and easy to configure, and it might give you a small productivity boost depending on your workflow. For me this is tiling WMs done right. Su…

"youtube-dl. Give it an URL, it will download media from it, no questions asked. It's hard to find software that does the right thing as often as youtube-dl does." I will second that. youtube-dl is like magic. It's too good to be true.

I'd like an easy-to-use plugin for FF to call youtube-dl.

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

#659

Post by omgdlight »

dopeboy wrote: post #330

Surprised no one has mentioned this yet - venmo. Does exactly what I want and nothing more. And it's free.

venmo is good and I appreciate, but at least on my android it's not what I'd call reliable. It suffers some random crashes and failures (although it's never done anything too terrible like double charge me)

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

#660

Post by senderista »

WA wrote: post #282
mbreedlove wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've installed Alfred before but just kept using Spotlight. I never saw why it amazes so many people. What does it do that Spotlight can't?

It isn't so annoyingly stupid like Spotlight. For months, I open a single file called TODO.TXT via Spotlight. I enter T..O..D.. and select TODO.TXT from the list. I don't search for anything else with Spotlight that begins with TOD or even TO. But Spotlight for whatever reason decides that for every second or third search attempt, it must show me an entirely different file than the one I opened a thousand times by pr…

I prefer using Spotlight from the command line: https://gist.github.com/senderista/1246300
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