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Ask HN: What are some unpopular technologies you wish people knew more about?

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141–150 of 417 posts

Re: Ask HN: What are some unpopular technologies you wish people knew more about?

#141

Turn your Postgres database into a REST API: https://postgrest.org Previous discussions on HN: https://hn.algolia.com/?q=postgrest

At one point, I really thought it was used in Supabase. But I guess they only wrote the js wrapper for it. https://github.com/supabase/postgrest-js

Came here to mention Hasura as well (not sure of it's popularity though) https://hasura.io/graphql/database/postgresql

Re: Ask HN: What are some unpopular technologies you wish people knew more about?

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, that works. Or I can have it all in a single shell.nix file that covers everything and is super simple to use. It's great for handing off to coworkers that don't usually use Python.

It's not simple. The nix programming language is like untyped ML. Most people aren't used to it and even if you are familiar with it it gets hella hard to read. Learning curve is huge. One docker file and a poetry file works just as well. And is simpler. It's literally the same thing but using os primitives to manage the environment rather then shell tricks. Makes more sense to me to use a dedicated os primitive for…

>It's not simple.

Neither is using virtualenvs for Python packages with native extensions.

Re: Ask HN: What are some unpopular technologies you wish people knew more about?

#144
post #30

Haxe - no idea why it isn't more popular.

The bootstrapping and getting it to work from scratch was rather complicated. A lot of the docs are outdated. That's why.

Which platform? On Windows there is a straightforward installer, and afterwards `haxelib` command installs e.g. HaxeFlixel, HaxeUI with all of the dependencies without any hiccups.

Re: Ask HN: What are some unpopular technologies you wish people knew more about?

#145
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dumb question but I thought tauri was the lightweight alternative to electron. Did I remember that incorrectly?

Lightweight often just translates to less features. Unless you're rewriting a truly bad piece of software, you're "lightweight" alternative will be just as heavyweight when you're done reimplementing everything

Yes, WebUI uses the real installed web browser, so no rewriting is needed like WebView. The lib is 200 Kb !!!

Re: Ask HN: What are some unpopular technologies you wish people knew more about?

#146
post #3

Firejail is cool: https://github.com/netblue30/firejail Linux namespaces/cgroups but lighter than Docker. I use it when I want to limit the memory of a Python script: ``` maxmem="56" #GB firejail --noprofile --rlimit-as=${maxmem}000000000 python myscript.py ```

How is it better for this use case than just using rlimit?

Re: Ask HN: What are some unpopular technologies you wish people knew more about?

#147
post #40

Not sure if you're looking for things as "trifling" as programming languages, but I do wish more people knew about Nim. It's fast, statically typed, reads more or less like Python, has a great effect system, etc. It's a joy to use. I've been working through writing an interpreter in it: https://youtu.be/48CsjEFzyXQ

I was using Nim for some of last years Advent of Code problems. I was mostly liking the syntax. Was a bit bother by the standard library have a snake case and camel case reference for each function (if I'm remember that correctly). At the time nimble also required me to have NPM to install the the Nim package manager, Nimble. This was not ideal, but looking at [the nimble project install docs]( https://github.com/nim…

I believe the whole language is "style insensitive" for variable names. So it's not just a feature of the stdlib.

Re: Ask HN: What are some unpopular technologies you wish people knew more about?

#148
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My first job involved working on a Pick system. The system started life on a Prime mainframe and was migrated to UniVerse on Solaris. I seriously miss it. Every once in a while I try to get back into it. Usually it takes the form of trying (and failing) to get a demo/personal version of UniVerse, but lately I've been poking at ScarletDME a little bit. I'd even pay money (not much since this is just hobby stuff, but s…

Thanks, Mister_Snuggles, for reminding me I'm not the only one left. I HAVE to code in PICK. "Unless it comes out of your soul like a rocket, unless being still would drive you to madness or suicide or murder, don’t do it." - Charles Burkowski (Funny, they named the current support company "Rocket".) Here's the link to the current Universe trial version (free and good until 04/2025. Get it, install it, and make somet…

Windows only?

Re: Ask HN: What are some unpopular technologies you wish people knew more about?

#149
My picks would be Zulip for messaging, and Adguard Home instead of pihole. And self host your email - if only to keep that skill alive.

The openSUSE build system is also great for building packages for a lot distros. It's not just for openSUSE.

Re: Ask HN: What are some unpopular technologies you wish people knew more about?

#150
post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, Mister_Snuggles, for reminding me I'm not the only one left. I HAVE to code in PICK. "Unless it comes out of your soul like a rocket, unless being still would drive you to madness or suicide or murder, don’t do it." - Charles Burkowski (Funny, they named the current support company "Rocket".) Here's the link to the current Universe trial version (free and good until 04/2025. Get it, install it, and make somet…

Windows only?

UNIX too
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