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Ask HN: What are some “10x” software product innovations you have experienced?

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Re: Ask HN: What are some “10x” software product innovations you have experienced?

#181

Post by e12e »

Maybe the original AJAX in internet explorer? Combined with Javascript it moved the web from being RESTful hypertext applications to enabling moveable code - killing Java applets, Ole/com plug-ins (including flash).

I'm a bit sad that tls/http2 basically put the final nail in the coffin, essentially killing the viability (if not possibility) of elegant caching from REST. But arguably it's an architecture that's not needed with today's ample resources (fast networks, fast cpus, ample ram and storage).

Hard to imagine that the defining technology of this decade came out of a classic "screw standards; extend/embrace/extinguish"-playbook.

Thanks to Netscape/Mozilla/Firefox (and opera/chrome) it went the other way.. .

Re: Ask HN: What are some “10x” software product innovations you have experienced?

#183

Post by typhonic »

In the 1980s I was impressed with LapLink software which I used to move files between computers. The copy I bought came with cables to connect the computers, both serial and parallel cables. The serial cable had 25 pin and 9 pin connectors on both ends. If one PC did not have a disk drive, they gave you instructions to write a short command to re-direct the serial input. LapLink would then transfer itself across the serial link and begin running.

Re: Ask HN: What are some “10x” software product innovations you have experienced?

#184

Post by anderspitman »

AlexB138 wrote: post #153

I'll avoid dating myself by keeping it sufficiently vague, but Open Source Software. Going from the world of closed source, for-profit software to that of FOSS is like night and day. It's more like a 100x improvement. Today's open-source world is quite different, but I'll still take it hands-down.

I find it interesting how big companies have adapted to use OSS to their advantage, leading to the popularity of JS libraries like React and complicated infrastructure systems like kubernetes.

They've managed to completely move the goalposts for what the baseline needs of a computer program are.

Re: Ask HN: What are some “10x” software product innovations you have experienced?

#185

Post by bombcar »

wlesieutre wrote: post #47
mtmail wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> or seeing your emails bounce when people had full inboxes. For those who don't remember: That was around the time when Yahoo offered 6MB, some others only 2MB.

Found this CNET article: https://www.cnet.com/news/google-to-offer-gigabyte-of-free-e... They say 2 MB Hotmail, 4 MB Yahoo. Gmail went straight to a gigabyte.

Today a single email without attachments can get close to those numbers!

Re: Ask HN: What are some “10x” software product innovations you have experienced?

#186

Post by Franciscouzo »

jakevoytko wrote: post #17

Gmail. Using web-based email clients was a nightmare before Gmail. They had limited storage space, and the UX was pretty bad, they were hard to search, etc. You spent all your time figuring out what you wanted to delete, or seeing your emails bounce when people had full inboxes. If you didn't log in for a while, your account would disappear. And then suddenly, you got a GB of storage. For free. No questions asked. An…

> If you didn't log in for a while, your account would disappear

That's still true for gmail, but the time is more reasonable at two years.

Re: Ask HN: What are some “10x” software product innovations you have experienced?

#187

Post by murph-almighty »

jasode wrote: post #48

+ using Google for search in 2000 and being amazed at how much better the results were than AltaVista and Yahoo Search. + Google Maps in 2004 and dragging the map interactively around. This was a quantum leap beyond Mapquest's page reload and reset with cumbersome arrow buttons. This was a paradigm shift that let me explore a geography better than any book atlas. I gave away all my atlases + MS Window Media Player's…

I cannot imagine a period of time where the STL didn't exist, which perhaps outs me as a younger dev

Re: Ask HN: What are some “10x” software product innovations you have experienced?

#188

Post by Ma8ee »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #168
aphextron wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+1 for this. Java gets shade from the hipsters these days, but it's almost impossible to overstate what a revolution it was for software engineering.

Java brought two things to the table compared to C++: garbage collection, and an enormous library. I don't think that garbage collection, by itself, was a 10x change. For it to be so, programmers would have to be spending 90% of their effort on freeing memory. Don't get me wrong, garbage collection is a big win when you can use it, but I don't think it's quite that big of a win. The library... that might almost be 10…

Not freeing memory, but tracking down memory leaks. We rarely even hear that term nowadays, but most large commercial programs used to have them.

Re: Ask HN: What are some “10x” software product innovations you have experienced?

#189

Post by anderspitman »

Farbklex wrote: post #65

Steam for PC Gaming. At first, it was just annoying DRM. But it was convenient. - Before that, you had to manually update your games in order to play the latest version - Without no-cd cracks, you were required to leave a CD / DVD in your drive - with the addition of steam workshops, installing mods for certain games became easier. You didn't have to manually copy paste files. - you have one central friend list, and…

Yeah but I want to be able to only buy one disc, take it out after the game starts on PC 1, and pop it into PC 2 for multiplayer.

Re: Ask HN: What are some “10x” software product innovations you have experienced?

#190

Post by aynsof »

jasode wrote: post #48

+ using Google for search in 2000 and being amazed at how much better the results were than AltaVista and Yahoo Search. + Google Maps in 2004 and dragging the map interactively around. This was a quantum leap beyond Mapquest's page reload and reset with cumbersome arrow buttons. This was a paradigm shift that let me explore a geography better than any book atlas. I gave away all my atlases + MS Window Media Player's…

> + Google Chrome in 2008 : 10x quality-of-life since misbehaving websites crashing don't bring down all the other tabs in my browsing session like Firefox/Opera.

Adding to this: just browser tabs themselves were a 10x improvement for me. I had actually forgotten what the world was like before tabs - a whole lot of unsortable windows, and a lot of clicks of the back button.

It was a godsend to be able to open new links in a tab, and to be able to see those tabs organised neatly in front of you.

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