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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?

#271

Post by Hrundi »

jldl805 wrote: post #217
anderspitman wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just a GB. It was also constantly increasing in size, with a live counter to show how much storage you had available. Super gimmicky, but fun. I guess there are probably a lot of people here who are too young to have ever used those early versions. You also had to scrounge forums for an invite code.

I made my account(s) off invite codes and have "just my last name" at gmail dot com as an address... it's one of my most prized possessions, to this day!

I managed to snag my (very common) italian last name. I get a flood of messages every day. I both love and hate my account.

I don't even speak italian!

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

#272

Post by knowuh »

mikewarot wrote: post #227

PKzip - way faster and better compression that previous things like ARC. The first version control I did was project01.zip, project02.zip, etc. SideKick - Being able to pop up and edit underneath a running MS-DOS program was a game changer for me Turbo Pascal - Being able to compile programs in less than a second in MS-DOS was magic , compared to 15min - hour waiting for the compiler queue on the VAX at school, only…

Picassa was the best thing miss it so.

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

#273

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

Docker containers (and the Dockerfile).

Docker has almost completely eliminated the need for OS-level configuration management. That's an entire class of software that is now virtually obsolete. Developers don't understand this, but Ops people got back like 20-50% of our time, and we can now do Immutable Infrastructure with apps. (Though it appears we traded Puppet for Terraform.... F*#&*@^&^!!!)

Creating immutable images with stock packaging tools and allowing you to build on top of them was the core of the revolution. But the other critical part was the Dockerfile. At first it seems almost stupidly simple. But actually, its genius is in its lack of freedom or functionality. It is incredibly impressive that it hasn't been overwhelmed by logic statements, templating, nested frankenstructures, etc. It's also wonderful that it's constructed for humans, not machines. Probably the best configuration format I've ever seen.

It's definitely not perfect, and there's still a lot of improvement needed. But we're never going back to not using containers. (The only alternative for Immutable IaC at the OS-level are entire VM images built by Packer and a shell script, and it's just not the same)

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

#274

Post by teekert »

Docker-compose: Over the past years I've gone from running some things I really wanted (Samba, Nginx with a website or 2 and maybe Drupal) to just about anything (NextCloud [2 installs for 2 families], Home Assistant, Bitwarden_rs, Minecraft servers, Unify Controller, Samba, WireGuard ...) And trying something new is soooo easy with Traefik taking care of name based routing and certs. And it feels good that my entire personal infrastructure can be backed up by copying a single Yaml file and a single folder (with many subfolders of course).

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

#275

Post by crimper »

sfblah wrote: post #252
deckard1 wrote: post #141

Firebug. Every developer from around 2006-2008 knows what I'm talking about. Debugging JS in IE6 was like trying to build a house blindfolded with both arms tied behind your back. Firebug is when JS went from just a web augmentation toy that could silently fail and your web page would still mostly function to becoming a critical function for a web page (many will see this as all a big mistake).

You didn't like debugging with window.alert()?

this gave me a vivid image of young me flailing around in the dark trying to understand why undefined is not a function

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

#276

Post by mwambua »

Google Photos. Easy image backup, arranged chronologically, with the ability to arrange stuff into albums. I haven't found anything quite like it since they killed off Picasa... and it has the added bonus of working across my operating systems.

Google being Google... I still backup my photos elsewhere, but I'm more than happy to keep paying for the convenience that it offers. It's amazing that I can pull up photos from 10 years ago on my phone on a whim.

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

#277

Post by dragonwriter »

narrator wrote: post #136
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 remember developing in the early 90s and there was no open source coding tools. It was miserable. One had to write everything from scratch or buy expensive libraries.

> I remember developing in the early 90s and there was no open source coding tools.

There were open source coding tools in the early 90s (a lot of the GNU tools, including Emacs and GCC, were first released in the mid-to-late 1980s.)

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

#278

Post by cardanome »

tootie wrote: post #132

Surprised no one has mentioned AWS yet. Anyone who remembers procuring, racking and imaging physical servers knows how utterly incredible it is create a cloud VM. And probably a good 20X improvement to use a value add cloud service like S3 or Netlify.

As someone working as a web developer for a smaller company, I don't get the use case for AWS. Super confusing naming of their services and nontransparent pricing.

For the vast majority of people some 5 Dollar hosting is more than they need. Just copy your files to the server. Does not get simpler.

And if you need more, it is super easy to set up a dedicated server these days anyway.

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

#279

Post by jbpnoy6fifty »

1) Pandas for data analysis and manipulation 2) BitTorrent (P2P file distribution technology). It is the best and fastest way to distribute files, however, it's main problem is piracy 3) Self updating software (Google chome was an early example) 4) AJAX - The web wouldn't have been what it is today without it 5) VIM 6) Package management software - Brew / apt-get / yum 7) software package management - pip / npm / maven

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

#280

Post by Nition »

swaggyBoatswain wrote: post #180
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…

I forgot how annoying things were before steam. Manually patching and update games, making sure the disc you bought had a key that wasn't already used. That being said, I do miss the little game guides that would come with your game. Starcraft 1 comes to mind. It told you what every unit did and it was a handy little reference companion that was wedged between the frontpanel of the CD cassette

Steam actually has a built-in feature for games to upload manuals, where they get a dedicated link[1]. Hardly any games bother though.

[1]In the current version of Steam, if there is a manual, it's at: Right click the game->Properties->General tab.

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