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Software I’m thankful for (2021)

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Re: Software I’m thankful for (2021)

#461

Post by physPop »

d3nj4l wrote: post #347
dividedbyzero wrote: post #126

The fish shell, makes using the shell feel almost painless. Hammerspoon, I use it to automatically switch audio devices based on context, so every call uses the best microphone currently available, window management via keystrokes, limiting media keys to Spotify, tons of other things. Indispensable. Arduino, I don't think I would be able to tinker with microcontrollers as much if I had to write C and use obscure tool…

If you don't mind me asking, why do you prefer Scala 3 specifically? What did it change over 2 that you made such a big difference?

Not OP but it's almost a whole new language. They removed a lot of boilerplate and it just feels a lot better planned out.

Re: Software I’m thankful for (2021)

#463

Post by lelanthran »

Dalewyn wrote: post #200
asciimov wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everybody has their pain points with every operating system. For me and windows it was when it updated a hibernating unplugged laptop overnight causing me to loose several hours of genealogy work. I had been using a new to me application that hadn't been doing any sort of background saving while I put in information. My had some niblings come over so I shut my unplugged laptop thinking id get back at it tomorrow. The…

>For me and windows it was when it updated a hibernating unplugged laptop overnight causing me to loose several hours of genealogy work. I had been using a new to me application that hadn't been doing any sort of background saving while I put in information. My had some niblings come over so I shut my unplugged laptop thinking id get back at it tomorrow. The next day when I opened the laptop I was greeted with the dr…

> To be fair and with no personal offense intended, this sounds more like a case of PEBKAC rather than specifically a Windows deficiency.

It's specifically a deficiency of the OS when it decides that the work you purchased the computer for is not as important as the work that Microsoft wants the computer to do.

No vendor, OS or otherwise, should decide that using the consumers computer for their (vendor's) own purposes is more important than the work that the computer was purchased for.

> To be clear, I agree Windows's forced, silent autoupdates and reboots are crimes against humanity, but "losing work I did not save" is hardly something that only applies to Windows and is a lesson we all learn the hard way eventually.

"Losing work I did not save because I forgot" is different from "the computer decided to discard all my work while I was working"

If you're in the middle of driving to work, and your car decides to pull over because Ford wants to do something is very different to driving to work and running out of fuel.

If you forget/refuse to fill fuel, that's on you when you get stuck. If you did everything right and still the car pulls over because the manufacturer wants to do something, that's not on you.

Re: Software I’m thankful for (2021)

#464

Post by NateEag »

Dalewyn wrote: post #360
asciimov wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it happens to me, an active computer user for 25 years, think of how often this has happened to others. How much work has frustratingly been lost because Windows knows better about when to update. Worse is technologically speaking this shouldn't even happen. Windows should be able to take a running application, save its state, do its update, reboot, then restore the application, without loosing a single byte of ap…

The vast majority of computer users, Windows users and otherwise, have experienced some form or another of data loss. I'm just being fair to Windows (and you!). To go back to your example, you lost your work after Windows decided to silently update and reboot overnight. Now the million dollar question: Why didn't you save your work before you left? A blackout or a drive crash or any number of failure cases could have…

> To go back to your example, you lost your work after Windows decided to silently update and reboot overnight. Now the million dollar question: Why didn't you save your work before you left?

Because humans are not perfectly consistent robots.

Any system design or paradigm that expects us to be is broken and user-hostile.

For myself, I have Emacs configured to autosave whenever I change focus or documents. I also commit and push whenever I make a meaningful step of progress.

For normals, built-in macOS apps like TextEdit have autosave these years. Pair that with Time Machine and an SMB NAS (see https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202784), and data loss is pretty darned rare in practice.

If the NAS has a cloud backup system, you'd really have to try to lose data.

Re: Software I’m thankful for (2021)

#465

Post by Bubble_Pop_22 »

hota_mazi wrote: post #415
Dalewyn wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I forget where I read it but a not insignificant percentage of pirated software contains malware, That just means you don't know where to look. >having my bank or brokerage account compromised would cost exponential orders of magnitude more than any software licence. I agree. For anything that's important, especially if it's mission-critical or commercial in nature, go the legit way. Handing Microsoft some cash mean…

You're missing his point. Downloading any illegal software can compromise your email and bank accounts and basically ruin your life. It only takes one.

Are you still wearing a mask and scared of COVID I assume?

The best security measure one can have is being an absolute nobody.

if anything pirated software is an indicator of low wealth and thus should make you more secure not less

Re: Software I’m thankful for (2021)

#466

Post by ciceryadam »

honest-teorema wrote: post #405
billyhoffman wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last week I learned some cool mouse and keyboard shortcuts in JetBrains, only to then discover they also did the same action in Visual Studio! No more “right click-go to definition” for me! I was presently surprised at how polished it was

Do toy have a link?

https://plugins.jetbrains.com/plugin/9792-key-promoter-x - this plugin shows you existing keyboard shortcuts for every action you make

Re: Software I’m thankful for (2021)

#467

Post by sirsinsalot »

recursiveturtle wrote: post #353
bonestamp2 wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to mention, there are so many helpers built in and it's one of the few pieces of software that I don't have any major complaints about.

I third this. I've tried everything from Notepad++ (and plugins), Sublime (and plugins), MacVim (and plugins), Atom, VS Code, to other heavyweight IDEs... I'm not a lucky person, avoid games of luck, but consider one of my few lucky moments being grandfathered into Jetbrains's sub model at a steep discount.

Me too, my "all tools" subscription has been the single best decision and return of my career

Re: Software I’m thankful for (2021)

#468

Post by neop1x »

aqfamnzc wrote: post #278
onehair wrote: post #64

ffmpeg is one software that comes to mind. At first it sounds and looks complicated, but all the internet video is ran by it, and now even for small stuff I use it with admiration

Can you elaborate on "all the internet video is ran by it"?

Many online services use it for encoding, decoding, transcoding, cutting, merging and muxing video and audio formats. It implements a lot of codecs. It is often also used to generate video thumbnails. Its filters [1] are also very powerful to create complex chains of functionality.

[1] https://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-filters.html

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