Ask HN: What software is so good you are surprised it is free? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What software is so good you are surprised it is free?

#21

Post by taeric » Sat, Feb 17, 2018, 8:02 AM UTC

It was said in jest, but emacs really is amazingly good for what it costs. Even more so if I consider each of the individual contributions that I take advantage of from so many other contributors. Helm, org-mode, use-package, paredit-everywhere, ace-isearch, magit, undo-tree, ...

The list really is quite impressive. And then there are the things I don't use, but still impress the hell out of me. Skewer mode being the frontrunner there.

Then there is Firefox. Easy to complain about memory usage and whatnot, but it really is an impressive piece of engineering for what I paid for it.

Re: Ask HN: What software is so good you are surprised it is free?

#22

Post by satanic_pope » Sat, Feb 17, 2018, 8:03 AM UTC

Pycharm (community edition) - you gotta use it to believe it. Incredible piece of software.

Dropbox (basic) - Support across platforms with cli.

Re: Ask HN: What software is so good you are surprised it is free?

#23

Post by gotrecruit » Sat, Feb 17, 2018, 8:07 AM UTC

not sure if this counts, but as long as you have a .edu account, all of JetBrains stuff is technically free. i've been using all their IDEs since school, and continue to renew my licenses with my .edu email no issues.

Re: Ask HN: What software is so good you are surprised it is free?

#24

Post by qalmakka » Sat, Feb 17, 2018, 8:08 AM UTC

KDE Plasma for me, it's amazing how good it is and how stable it has become. I've been using KDE for years and I've recommended it to almost anyone I could - and they always stuck with it, because it was simply too much well done. Compared to gnome 3 and other new desktop environments, KDE has always been so easy to use, predictable and customisable, a very joy to use.

Re: Ask HN: What software is so good you are surprised it is free?

#25

Post by glandium » Sat, Feb 17, 2018, 8:08 AM UTC

brettkromkamp wrote: post #5

Blender. It is probably one of the most versatile 3D suites available.

Interestingly, Blender was originally proprietary, and was open-sourced after its parent company went bankrupt, and only after money was raised from the open-source crowd (before crowdfunding was a thing).

Re: Ask HN: What software is so good you are surprised it is free?

#26

Post by kbouck » Sat, Feb 17, 2018, 8:08 AM UTC

Elasticsearch

Re: Ask HN: What software is so good you are surprised it is free?

#27

Post by tmnvix » Sat, Feb 17, 2018, 8:08 AM UTC

eksemplar wrote: post #9

Trello, draw.io, visual studio code.

Thanks for mentioning draw.io. After a quick look around I can see that it will be very useful. I especially like the interface. If it wasn't for my browser interface above I would swear this is a very well made desktop app. Standard OS inputs used well are hard to beat. This really makes me think twice about using some of the fancy UI libraries out there.

Re: Ask HN: What software is so good you are surprised it is free?

#28

Post by zachrose » Sat, Feb 17, 2018, 8:09 AM UTC

OpenSCAD. It’s not feature rich but it does its thing very well with a clean user interface AND a nice language to work in.

Re: Ask HN: What software is so good you are surprised it is free?

#29

Post by methyl » Sat, Feb 17, 2018, 8:13 AM UTC

Figma

Re: Ask HN: What software is so good you are surprised it is free?

#30

Post by arthurcolle » Sat, Feb 17, 2018, 8:14 AM UTC

jakoblorz wrote: post #12

Well obviously not free but waaay to cheap: sublime For free: visual studio code

sublime is overpriced by a factor of 2-3

especially with competition from atom + with electron improvements leading to atom not having totally garbage performance