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Ask HN: What are some “10x” software product innovations you have experienced?
571–580 of 818 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are some “10x” software product innovations you have experienced?
#572I've experienced some 10x jumps, mainly because I tend to wait until something comes along that's 10x before switching. Not that I'm smart, but stubborn.
- Turbo Pascal. My dad knew nothing about computers, but the Wall Street Journal ran an article about TP, and he knew I was interested in programming, so he got me a copy for my birthday. It allowed me to program almost as quickly as BASIC, but with half a chance of my programs working. (Yes, 50% chance was a 10x improvement). Not to mention, a motivation to learn more disciplined programming.
- HyperCard and then Visual Basic. I never had to learn the guts of a modern OS and its API just to write usable software.
- "Scientific" Python stack. The quality and breadth of the language, tools, and libraries is just stunning to me. I looked into Python because it was getting a lot of "buzz" when I first joined HN. Thanks, y'all.
- Arduino and the higher powered microcontrollers that it supports, for making it easy and quick to whip up applications. But even pre-Arduino, a number of 10x improvements came along for me on the hardware / electronics side, starting with microprocessor interfacing in BASIC, EEPROM based microcontrollers, decent C compilers for embedded.
Re: Ask HN: What are some “10x” software product innovations you have experienced?
#573Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
But think about all the things that you can't do in FoxPro, like build an accessible and beautiful user-experience :)
Ever really built an accessible Web-UI? I mean with all that ARIA stuff, that really works for the blind or other disabled people?
An accessible UI that honors the platform specific conventions and integrates into the OS environment?
Ever built an user-experience atop ideas like "form follows function" and "don't make me think", that has beautiful design at the same time?
I actually question that there are more than a handful Web-UIs been built in that way, ever, IF actually any!
Re: Ask HN: What are some “10x” software product innovations you have experienced?
#574The personal computer (as a category, not just the IBM PC). I first ran into one in high school, when the computer science lab got five TRS80s. Before that, it was submitting a FORTRAN deck that someone took to an off-site mainframe. Half a week later, you got your results. But with the TRS80, you got them as fast as the program ran. Now the CS lab did have a Teletype terminal, though I never used it. But the TRS80 h…
I am guessing such a long feedback loop required proofreading your code very carefully before submission. Do you still have this skill now when the feedback loop is so much shorter?
I noticed that some very senior programmers check their code for much longer than rookies like me, who just keep banging "Run" until there are no more warnings ;)
Re: Ask HN: What are some “10x” software product innovations you have experienced?
#575Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Gmail web interface also (re)invented AJAX. The number of web applications that used XMLHttpRequest increased exponentially after the success of Gmail.
it was also written in Java which then compiled into client side javascript(!)
Not the original version. The current version is a hybrid of code compiled from Java (J2CL, previously GWT) mostly business logic shared with Android, iOS, and the server backends, and a UI that is built with Closure Library. It's monolithically compiled and globally optimized via Closure Compiler.
Re: Ask HN: What are some “10x” software product innovations you have experienced?
#576Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
But think about all the things that you can't do in FoxPro, like build an accessible and beautiful user-experience :)
Most web sites aren't accessible. A capability is irrelevant if it's never used.
Meanwhile, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. The modern webtech trends are offensive to my eyes - in addition to being ridiculously compute- and visual-space-inefficient.
Re: Ask HN: What are some “10x” software product innovations you have experienced?
#577Showing 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…
I have no familiarity with #2 so that's interesting to me-- do you or other people actually use uber/lyft to get to and fro work? Isn't that like $15-20 each way every day, thousands of dollars a year?
250 days is mon-fri, with three days off. 250 * 2 * $20 is $10,000. That sounds like a lot, but - it depends on what you gain/lose. If you can avoid buying a car (plus insurance and gas), and live a little further away, in a place that's a little bit cheaper - you can easily save more than $10,000 a year. Uber-enabled at the edge of the city for $1200 / month vs walkable in the middle of the city at $2000 / month, and you're pretty close to break even.
I still took the bus for fixed commutes (to and from work) - when I woke up on time. But uber is very convenient if you're in a city - the population density makes rides near instantaneous.
Re: Ask HN: What are some “10x” software product innovations you have experienced?
#578Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
Sorry to have ask, but do you mind explaining this joke? I'm trying to fit in "grandma so senile she can't Pancake; sushi install" but it's not clicking.
something like “She cant mint aUSDC to farm CAKE”
there are better tweets and memes floating around about how convoluted yield farming really is
Re: Ask HN: What are some “10x” software product innovations you have experienced?
#579Earlier quoted context omitted.
> + 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 lin…
This was the entrypoint to Firefox for millions of people. Unlike today, back then Firefox had a clearly expressive value proposition: Use this! It has tabs! It will change how you browse the web! Now the only value proposition is some wishy-washy privacy stuff that is much harder to sell people on, even if it's in their best interest.
Phoenix/Firebird was sold first through its incredible speed, compared to IE, plus popup blocking. The tabs were a nice bonus but the other two were the features that got all of us pushing the browser on every friend and relative who'd let us, even if they'd never use/understand tabbed browsing (some don't, to this day).
Re: Ask HN: What are some “10x” software product innovations you have experienced?
#580* FaceTime - of course VC has been around a long time, but FT made it all better, usable even for old people, and expected. * Windows Subsystem for Linux - for what I do with Linux (no GUI, some coding, some admin) it's a 10x improvement over using Gnome/unity as a daily driver GUI, VMs, dual booting, or using a Mac (just IMO). * Postman - I don't know if it was first, but it made debugging requests 10x easier for me…
FT was a major leap forward in Video Chat. It completely changed the game.