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Ask HN: What are your favorite examples of elegant software?

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Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite examples of elegant software?

#302

The things app https://culturedcode.com/things/ , even though it's just an elegant TODO app something drove me to buy the iPhone and Mac versions. Some time ago I spent a good amount of time looking for a development stack that allowed me to just build stuff. I ended up trying and deciding on Laravel Jetstream with InertiaJS https://jetstream.laravel.com/2.x/stacks/inertia.html . Laravel was easy enough already to ju…

I love Things, and for a long time used it every day. I just can't get behind their pricing model though, the desktop version in Australia is $80 which is outrageously expensive for a TODO app that can largely be replaced with the slightly inferior but free Reminders app.

I've been using Things on iOS for a long time and I should say their desktop pricing for me is worth the money and investment. I understand its pricey because it is just a one time payment. As a father, husband and dev juggling between work and family it is just a task to keep up with everything.

Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite examples of elegant software?

#305

Standard Notes. Simple. Free. Open Source. E2E encryption. Basically, No frills. Their idea is to make software not with most features but the one that stays until the next century. They have a great blog on this philosophy. https://standardnotes.com/longevity

Man, I've looked at Standard Notes and want to love it and switch everything over to it. This is the only thing holding me back is the lack of background sync on mobile: https://github.com/standardnotes/mobile/issues/45

I've started using plain git to sync my Markdown notes - https://www.bbkane.com/blog/how-i-take-notes/

Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite examples of elegant software?

#306

Standard Notes. Simple. Free. Open Source. E2E encryption. Basically, No frills. Their idea is to make software not with most features but the one that stays until the next century. They have a great blog on this philosophy. https://standardnotes.com/longevity

I was also going to suggest this, although there are a few things about the UI that I don't love - e.g., it takes 5 'tab' keystrokes to get from a note title to the note body. On that note (no pun intended), I do wish it was possible to query tag intersections, so to speak. E.g., show notes tagged with both 'todo' & 'coding'.

I find the editor and UI fairly lacking, but I really appreciate the E2EE. I have a few more years on my 5 year subscription. It is interesting knowing your notes are fully encrypted sort of mentally frees you to write down exactly what you're thinking, and spend less time self censoring.

Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite examples of elegant software?

#308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

any examples?

Mercedes has a system on the S-class that uses the sensors to detect a potential impact (e.g. an rapidly approaching vehicle while the car is stationary) and uses the active suspension to "jump" raising the car a few inches just at the moment of impact, apparently slightly reducing the potential for injury. Many cars and especially planes & spaceships are have tons of systems like this. I worked on a system that did…

>...a different database to include substitute data and pass this back to be used instead

The thing that trips me up about this is how can you ensure that the substitute data is actually useful. Is the substitute data a copy of the primary data? I guess it all depends on the use case...

Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite examples of elegant software?

#309
Elegance is usually an unassertive quality. It's harder to say what software is elegant than it is to say what isn't elegant. To me it usually means that something is done correctly for you, things are presented clearly, and annoying chores are removed. Consistency and a lack of surprises.

The first thing that comes to mind as elegant compared to the alternatives is k9s for managing/monitoring kubernetes.

Re: Ask HN: What are your favorite examples of elegant software?

#310

Most recently Tailscale, I enabled it on NixOS and minutes later had a secure VPN set up.

was just about to mention this as well. considering it only takes 30 second to install and log in on a device, and then it just works without any more setup... can't really get any more elegant than that
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