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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?

#781

Post by brokenmachine »

still_grokking wrote: post #624
crazygringo wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only on HN. Otherwise it's the #1 browser by usage by far, which is saying a lot considering it doesn't come preinstalled on Windows or on Macs, so all those users are making a deliberate choice to switch. So still the hero outside of HN.

Google is gas-lighting people into using Chrome… Ever used for example YouTube with an alternative browser? It's buggy, it's slow (and that's on purpose; Google puts regularly quite some engineering effort into using web features that don't work well in the last independent competing browser). But those Google pages have a big banner saying it will work better in Chrome, and asking the users to "try". That strategy w…

I don't mind using Youtube on Firefox over here, and I don't find it slow.

With adblocker I have nothing to complain about.

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

#782

Post by brokenmachine »

eyelidlessness wrote: post #664
eyelidlessness wrote: post #610

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> visual-space-inefficient If you’re referring to the oft discussed “information density” issue, my goodness, scroll a little. That spacing is good for usability and, yes, accessibility. Those larger action targets and the space between them are not only good for us with vision impairment but for people whose only computing device is a phone.

I’ve noticed a pattern of what I get downvoted for and it doesn’t reflect well on this community. 1. Asking people to show a little empathy to others (eg use your scroll wheel so people can benefit from reading a thing or clicking it at all) 2. Asking people to show a little empathy to others (eg recognizing that people who have violent ideologies are dangerous and don’t deserve free mandatory amplification from othe…

Personally, I get downvoted for literally anything I type about Apple. Apple zealots will steadfastly defend the honor of the company even in opposition to their own interests.

Bring on the downvotes!

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

#783

Post by bps4484 »

Aperocky wrote: post #629
bps4484 wrote: post #203

Jquery - abstracted away tons of cross-browser inconsistent behavior, both with the dom and javascript, and added new selectors to make dom manuplation easier. I think there was a reason it was adopted as fast as it was, it really was a 10x improvement in working client side.

I feel it's usefulness has ran its course though. The spirit lives on through ES6.

Absolutely it has run its course. There are a now a litany of javascript frameworks to suit the variety of projects being done in javascript (both server and client side), and browsers are now far more compatible (I think partially because browser makers realized with the popularity of jquery how in demand that was) but I was only recognizing what an innovation it was at the time.

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

#784

Post by brokenmachine »

Macha wrote: post #112
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…

> - the refund system is user friendly (refund if you haven't played for more than 2 hours) Well, depends on your expectations. * It wasn't first (that was Origin) * It wasn't there for a long time after the store launched * It doesn't meet minimum requirements of consumer law in places such as the EU or Australia. The rest I agree with though.

> It doesn't meet minimum requirements of consumer law in places such as the EU or Australia.

I'm in Australia. What consumer laws do we have about games?

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

#785

Post by asidiali »

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…

Not including potential repair costs either

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

#787

Post by petepete »

skinkestek wrote: post #550
petepete wrote: post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Experts Exchange also used to do that awful thing where they let Google index the solution but would hide it from visitors until they'd signed in. I believe Google penalised them for doing it so they used another sneaky trick where they showed a obscured/pixelated answer first and then the actual one further down than most people would scroll. SO was better in every way.

> Experts Exchange also used to do that awful thing where they let Google index the solution but would hide it from visitors until they'd signed in. This might make someone here angry that they weren't aware of it (or make them smile): This is how they did it: The answers were always visible if you just scrolled far enough down the page. At least that is how I experienced it - and I thought every oldtimer knew! :-)

No, they only started doing that after Google penalised them for underhand tactics.

There's a full description of how it worked on their Wikipedia article.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Experts_Exchange#Paywall

You should probably check before dishing out patronising and incorrect answers.

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

#788

Post by forgotmypw17 »

One of my interests is browser history, so I'll list these. Before I begin, shout-outs to Perl, GNU, Windows 2000, Windows 95, Norton Commander, Windows Commander, Linux, BSD, Digg 1.0, irssi, and, of course, HN.

Mosaic, the original "best viewed with" browser, which brought us inline graphics.

Netscape 3.0, the first "to the masses" browser, which made not only browsing, but authoring too, accessible for anyone and everyone.

Internet Explorer 3.0, not quite 10x, but it was the first browser with a truly beautiful UI/toolbar, still one of the nicest looking ever in my opinion.

Lynx, one of the oldest browsers, allowing Web access to countless individuals otherwise in countless scenarios and situtions.

Opera 3.0, the super fast browser which tried to stick to standards. Along with my own add-on to give it status-colored tabs, this was my first "better than mainstream" browser experience.

Internet Explorer 4.0, the first browser which had true DOM, true dynamic HTML, if you coded carefully.

Netscape 4.0, the fastest browser for a long time, one I stuck with longer than most gave up. Proper caching, and blazing fast rendering of uncomplicated HTML.

Internet Explorer 6.0, with reasonable standards support, DOM, CSS, and embeddability with full DOM access from the parent app, a breakthrough in scraping abilities.

Opera 12.0, even today one of the best standards-supporting rendering engines, fast beyond imagination, fully Acid compliant, stable, and one of the first single-key shortcut supporters.

Mozilla Suite and Firefox 1.0, the best browser of its day, not only fast and flexible, but allowing previously unimaginable UI improvements and enhancements, spurring an era of creativity in development.

Vimium/VimFX, a new level of keyboard accessibility in browsers.

Links, and Links2-GUI, a new level of rendering prowess and accessibility in the console

w3m, the console browser beast for nerds, with even better accessibility (albeit with a learning curve) and customizability.

And, last of not least, the King of hacker-friendly browsing as of today, qutebrowser, a whole new level of stability, accessibility, and clean design, albeit with a week-long learning curve.

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

#789

Post by still_grokking »

mackrevinack wrote: post #763
still_grokking wrote: post #611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you point to some professional grade plugins or DAWs that are free? Never heard of that. Also a decent professional grade audio interface is still quite some $$. It's not like $$k like in the past, but you still have to pay a few hundred bucks. Compared to say 50 years ago everything audio got really cheap, sure. It was in the tens of thousands range, now it's in the "a few thousands" range for semi-professiona…

there might be something on this list that interests you: https://github.com/ciconia/awesome-music reaper is another DAW that is not free but its only 60 or something so its practically nothing compared to others. i used it for 3 or so years without paying and the only drawback is you have to wait 5 seconds for the nag screen at the start to close. i don't want to sound like im on commission for reaper but i really l…

Oh, the section about music programming environments contained a few really awesome things that were new to me.

Thanks a lot!

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

#790

Post by sails »

vitorbaptistaa wrote: post #177

dbt [1] is a tool that is deceptively simple, but kind of created a new job role: analytics engineer. It allow you to define tables using SQL plus Jinja2, so you can add loops and variables to create your SQL code. It might sound complicated, but it's a pleasure to work with. This improvement was only possible because of other improvements in cloud databases and reductions in storage costs, which allowed us to go fro…

Agree, this was a huge improvement on workflow in analytics.
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