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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?

#631

Post by speedgoose »

bcoates wrote: post #613

1. Windows 95, as opposed to Win3.x/DOS. 100% worth the hardware/software compatibility pains for GUI/multitasking/multimedia/PnP that just worked, an amazing thing at the time (and honestly, in retrospect, giving the preposterous unstandardized diversity of PCs & their peripherals and software in that decade) 2. SQLite, vs fopen and hand-parsed files for any random data storage that didn't rate a full blown remote D…

You can still have deadlocks in NodeJS, when you play with promises and are not careful.

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

#632

Post by shakezula »

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…

That last point is something i hadn’t fully considered but is absolutely valid here. I have watched so much content at 2x speed that I would never have cared about in the slightest at 1x. The human brain is strange like that.

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

#633

Post by Aperocky »

marianov wrote: post #416

Wireshark. I've saved countless enterprise problems that nobody could debug by intercepting traffic and guessing, or looking at the raw data nobody knew was there. Python list comprehensions + ipython: it changed how I approach all compley python code. I iterate over the data until I get it right, then use that as the basis of the program/script. Youtube: I can learn anything now. It's the real world The Matrix

Interesting use of wireshark.. I'd assume they'd at least allow you access from at least one end.

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

#634

Post by radley »

My list is more digital-creative than hacker:

- Photoshop layers (non-destructive editing)

- Bryce (3D for consumers)

- Flash (easy rich media web apps)

- Flash video (online video explosion)

- Plex (easy digital media collection)

- Traktor DJ Studio (digital DJing)

- Wordpress (self-hosted CMS)

- Pacemaker (auto-DJing app)

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

#635

Post by euske »

For those who mostly work on terminals, GNU screen/tmux is truly a blessing.

Also, if this isn't considered as cheating, Python. Now I can automate everything without worrying the quirkiness of shell scripts.

My work setup hasn't changed much in the last two decades.

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

#636

Post by tape_measure »

billfruit wrote: post #566
dopeboy wrote: post #192

Stackoverflow. Its closest competitor, experts exchange, was a slow website that required you sign up to see an answer that was rarely useful. There's a direct correlation to SO and dollars of revenue I've driven.

Its closest competitor has been Quora for several years.

Stack Overflow is much better than Quora. Quora has gone downhill over the last few years with paid contributions and modal nags. It sea they will also sign me in after I click a link in their email digests. I don't know how that can be secure

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

#637

Post by vood »

1. Specifically AWS RDS and Aurora. It is incredible how much time it saved for me in the past 7 years.

2. Resharper from Jetbrains and all IDEs from them. Using something like Eclipse was such a pain and nightmare.

3. Cloud and SaaS as a concept. Everything just became 10x better when moved to SaaS.

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

#638

Post by kamaal »

Perl.

Before JSON, XML and other standardised data exchange standards became a norm. And Java was still playing the catch up game with libraries. Perl was the the go to tool for achieving over a weekend what projects done in other languages took months to achieve. This was true as early as 2012.

Those days are behind us. But it was some thing like a magical tool back then.

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