Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
[object Object]
Ask HN: What are some “10x” software product innovations you have experienced?
401–410 of 818 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are some “10x” software product innovations you have experienced?
#402Surprised 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.
AWS? Peuh. Hetzner made it possible to host websites with many millions of pageviews per month without robbing a bank.
Re: Ask HN: What are some “10x” software product innovations you have experienced?
#403Earlier quoted context omitted.
The only problem I had with Kazaa is how often people would rename files for reasons I'll never understand. Like...imagine downloading "The Matrix.avi", and you start playing it, and it turns out it was actually a copy of Fight Club. WHY!?
One thing I liked about Napster and the like is that bootlegs and B-sides circulated along with the official releases. I miss not having these on Spotify. Yes, there are official live albums on there. And yes, you can still find these bootlegs elsewhere. But there's enough friction that I rarely do this.
Yeah, Napster's value still hasn't been replaced in full. I remember pulling some obscure song from another endpoint halfway around the planet and then being able to browse their music collection, which turned me on to other cool music. You can kind of do the same thing on spotify by following people and playlists, but it's not the same discovery magic that Napster had, especially for obscure or hyper-local stuff. I'm not enough of a music nerd anymore to care as much these days, but Napster really was the cat's venerable pj's back then.
Re: Ask HN: What are some “10x” software product innovations you have experienced?
#4041. DOCKER
I don't hear "works on my machine" nearly as much nowadays. Everyone is running the same code in the same environment. It's all there under source control.
Now I can get a project running on a different machine in a few minutes, without any special instructions. That also applies to my colleagues, or people looking at my GitHub projects. My software's interface with the host machine is clearly defined, so there are very few surprises.
2. GOOGLE PHOTOS
No more moving photos around with cables and SD cards. No more tagging anything in Lightroom. I can type "pug" and I'll see every photo of a pug I've taken.
There are no logistics around taking pictures anymore, and it's much better that way.
3. MAPS
Google Maps, but also Open Street Map. Cartography is an incredible blessing, and we take it for granted.
Re: Ask HN: What are some “10x” software product innovations you have experienced?
#405User experience is usually the 10x differentiator. An Uber and a regular Taxi will both get me to my location with similar time and cost. The difference was that I could get an Uber by pressing a couple buttons on my phone and monitor the entire process from an app. A taxi required (at the time) phone calls, waiting around for a taxi to arrive, trying to communicate location, and other hassles that disappeared when u…
> phone calls
This can make things awfully complicated when you and the dispatcher don't speak the same language.
> waiting around for a taxi to arrive
The worst part about waiting for a taxi is the dice roll of whether one will actually arrive. Often in the case of a popular spot (like after the end of an event) the taxi could pick up someone else from the same location - or worse yet, not show up at all. The introduction of feedback associated with a specific driver has completely changed the incentive to actually show up and pick up the correct person.
Re: Ask HN: What are some “10x” software product innovations you have experienced?
#406Firebug. 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).
It's interesting that this is kind of a constant .1x * 10x = 1 cycle we repeatedly go through with new platforms. We rarely realize the cost of a new development platform in the fact that we often have to start from zero with documentation, tools, communities, etc. Tools are arguably the easiest to realize on day 1, when all of a sudden you can't set a breakpoint. So it's really .1x development in many ways until som…
Some day, before I die, I hope that when I say "If it doesn't work for the developers, then soon it won't work for the customers," and people will know what the hell I'm talking about.
Re: Ask HN: What are some “10x” software product innovations you have experienced?
#407User experience is usually the 10x differentiator. An Uber and a regular Taxi will both get me to my location with similar time and cost. The difference was that I could get an Uber by pressing a couple buttons on my phone and monitor the entire process from an app. A taxi required (at the time) phone calls, waiting around for a taxi to arrive, trying to communicate location, and other hassles that disappeared when u…
What's crazy is that any taxi company (and there are some large ones which have the resources) could have done this. Then, after Uber launched, instead of jumping on the bandwagon and doing they same they instead dig in their heels and fought it. Only after it was too late did they attempt to do the same.
In Austin, they had a taxi app at the right time. The problem was that they were still taxis, and if no one felt like ever coming to pick you up, then you were just left high and dry. Uber told a specific person to come pick me up. Taxis would take whatever fare they found on the way to my house.
Re: Ask HN: What are some “10x” software product innovations you have experienced?
#408The abolition of punched cards...finally, it was practical to indent code!
Visual editing...I remember when all text editors used a command language that made you keep a listing of the file next to your terminal so you could translate your markup into editor commands. (And, yes, I still know my way around ed.)
SCCS/CVS/RCS: as wonderful as git/hg/fossil and others are, any source control system is better than none.
Tree-structured file directories, so you could separate files of different projects into different directories.
Yes, I HAVE been around a long time!
Re: Ask HN: What are some “10x” software product innovations you have experienced?
#409Re: Ask HN: What are some “10x” software product innovations you have experienced?
#410Earlier quoted context omitted.
Kazaa
The only problem I had with Kazaa is how often people would rename files for reasons I'll never understand. Like...imagine downloading "The Matrix.avi", and you start playing it, and it turns out it was actually a copy of Fight Club. WHY!?
I'm pretty sure there were servers out there taking incoming search strings and slapping them on the end of file names. You could search for RANDOM_STRING and find a "britney spears matrix hot babes unsavory search (2)(1)RANDOM_STRING.mov.wmv.exe"