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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?

#501

Post by elihu »

saalweachter wrote: post #232

Modern Linux distros. Yeah, I have so many complaints about them, but for a wide range of use-cases and hardwares, they "just work" now. In the olden days, Linux desktops and servers, and especially laptops were much more "pets" than "livestock", needing constant attention and care to keep them working, correctly configured, and up to date. Half the time when you added a new software package or piece of hardware you'…

I remember the old days of having to run a program to generate proper modelines to get XFree86 working with whatever monitor I was trying to use.

Though to be fair, having explicit modelines was once also useful when modifying a BNC Trinitron monitor that ran at one very specific resolution to connect to VGA.

It's nice that monitors mostly just work these days.

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

#502

Post by afavour »

aspnet_dev wrote: post #425
yold__ wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seconding that. Although Firebug was wonderful, cross-platform development was not (IE and FireFox). Example of "quirks mode" nonesense: 1. The "hidden" element at the root of the IE DOM tree, only accessible with "*" via CSS 2. inline-block was broken on IE6 (but fixable with hacks), and no transparent PNG support. 3. The outline CS property was implemented the same as background in IE Best of all was the dog slow I…

Having a proper doc type and having a specific IE stylesheet that added zoom:1 property to element could fix a lot of that off the bat and was a simple one to include on a webpage. Transparent PNGs of course wouldn't work (well there was a way but it was an arcane trick and I can't remember it for the life of me now). TBH I found cross platform development during that time easier than when smart mobile phones came ou…

> Transparent PNGs of course wouldn't work (well there was a way but it was an arcane trick and I can't remember it for the life of me now).

In the recesses of my brain somewhere is a memory that it was related to ActiveX, and/or the CSS filter property. You set some special filter value that invoked ActiveX? Maybe I'm remembering incorrectly but if I think about it too deeply I might start screaming and never stop.

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

#503

Post by SatvikBeri »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #327
SatvikBeri wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It made a big difference for me with occasional trips, I took public transportation to work, but Uber/Lyft meant I could go visit my friends for $10 and 10 minutes instead of $2 and 45 minutes. Note that a car also costs thousands of dollars a year once you factor in everything, Edmunds estimates the true cost of a corolla at $7k/year: https://www.edmunds.com/toyota/corolla/2020/cost-to-own/

I have multiple experiences with Toyota’s driven 200k to 300k miles with just standard repairs. A Corolla costs $20k? $25k? Let’s say $1k for new tires/brakes/oil changes/filters every 45k miles. That’s $333 per year for maintenance, and the car lasts 13 to 20 years at 15k miles per year for 200k to 300k miles, so let’s say $2k per year on the high end, $1,200 per year on the low end. Extremely high liability insuran…

Others have commented on other points, but I'll note "Extremely high liability insurance is $50 a month or less." – the cheapest liability only insurance I can find is $120/month, and I'm 32 & married with a clean driving record. $100–$150/month seems to be the norm, talking to my friends.

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

#504

Post by vmception »

henrikschroder wrote: post #468
thraxil wrote: post #264

- SSH. Maybe not in terms of performance or efficiency, but before SSH, we were using telnet everywhere and just sending passwords in plaintext all over the internet. Plus, you could give someone your public key and they could give you access to a server instead of the "here's a temporary password, change it as soon as you log in" approach. - Perl. This was at the time when the other languages available to me as a st…

> apt-get. I saw a joke the other day that went something like: "What, is your grandma so senile that she can't type ./configure; make; make install" ? Installing software on linux truly sucked before package managers.

That joke persists in the DeFi / yield farming space right now, except with sillier names because the main services have names like Sushi and Pancake

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

#506

Post by jcoby »

aspnet_dev wrote: post #425
yold__ wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seconding that. Although Firebug was wonderful, cross-platform development was not (IE and FireFox). Example of "quirks mode" nonesense: 1. The "hidden" element at the root of the IE DOM tree, only accessible with "*" via CSS 2. inline-block was broken on IE6 (but fixable with hacks), and no transparent PNG support. 3. The outline CS property was implemented the same as background in IE Best of all was the dog slow I…

Having a proper doc type and having a specific IE stylesheet that added zoom:1 property to element could fix a lot of that off the bat and was a simple one to include on a webpage. Transparent PNGs of course wouldn't work (well there was a way but it was an arcane trick and I can't remember it for the life of me now). TBH I found cross platform development during that time easier than when smart mobile phones came ou…

> Transparent PNGs of course wouldn't work (well there was a way but it was an arcane trick and I can't remember it for the life of me now).

It was a DXImageTransform Alpha filter. Complete pain to use.

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

#507

Post by Shorel »

tolmasky wrote: post #389
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).

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…

Yes. Web technology has advanced so much that now I can do what I was able to do in FoxPro 25 years ago, in just twice the time.

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

#508

Post by munchbunny »

afavour wrote: post #502
aspnet_dev wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having a proper doc type and having a specific IE stylesheet that added zoom:1 property to element could fix a lot of that off the bat and was a simple one to include on a webpage. Transparent PNGs of course wouldn't work (well there was a way but it was an arcane trick and I can't remember it for the life of me now). TBH I found cross platform development during that time easier than when smart mobile phones came ou…

> Transparent PNGs of course wouldn't work (well there was a way but it was an arcane trick and I can't remember it for the life of me now). In the recesses of my brain somewhere is a memory that it was related to ActiveX, and/or the CSS filter property. You set some special filter value that invoked ActiveX? Maybe I'm remembering incorrectly but if I think about it too deeply I might start screaming and never stop.

Yup it was something like that. I think it was the opacity property. IE6 required a custom property so in order to do opacity you had to set at least two CSS properties, might have actually been more because Safari/Firefox/Opera/IE mostly had opacity as a CSS extension.

I don’t miss those days.

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

#509

Post by CalChris »

showerst wrote: post #42

Showing my age here, heh: 1. Early Ruby on Rails -- Now that MVC/ORM packges are the norm, it's hard to describe how revolutionary the original '15 minute blog' video was. It really felt like a quantum leap for CRUD apps. 2. Uber/Lyft - It has literally remolded the city I live in, by making large areas that are transit-inconvenient more attractive to live in. 3. Linode -- Access to a cheap server that you could spin…

Yeah, Uber/Lyft is 10x better than cabs ever were.

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

#510

Post by jarek83 »

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…

Funny how Google went from user's hero to zero.
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