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Ask HN: What are some unpopular technologies you wish people knew more about?
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Re: Ask HN: What are some unpopular technologies you wish people knew more about?
#282Books
Yes. I thought this thread would be cool, and it's pretty good, but way too much about programming languages. Books, on the other hand, are amazing.
Re: Ask HN: What are some unpopular technologies you wish people knew more about?
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's the same thing for Docker. Just one command. The nix is much harder to deal with mainly because shell.nix is harder to read and write then a Docker file. Additionally nix uses shell hacks to get everything working. Docker uses an os primitive DESIGNED for this very use case. And additionally, because docker uses os primitives you can use docker-compose to manage multiple processes on multiple different environme…
You're seriously overestimating how hard this is, especially with poetry2nix. I like docker just fine and have used it in a development workflow and it's a pain in the ass and should never be used for that. It's great for packaging stuff up for prod, though. Also, one man's "DESIGNED" is another man's hacks. I don't see anything wrong with how nix works. Potato/potato, I guess.
I'm not overestimating anything. it's not hard once the shell.nix is there, but everything to get to that point is waaay harder than docker. In the end once you're done you have two ways of doing the same thing with one command.
I think I know what you're getting at. nix-shell provides a fast way to get access to that specific shell environment which is a bit more annoying to do with docker. All docker needs to do is provide this interface by default and the only surface level differences between the two techniques is really just the configuration.
>Also, one man's "DESIGNED" is another man's hacks. I don't see anything wrong with how nix works. Potato/potato, I guess.
By any colloquial usage of the term "designed" in this context by any unbiased party, it's obvious Nix is more hacky by any charitable interpretation. NixOS is a layer on top of linux, containers are a linux feature. Thus creating a layer on top of linux to use existing features is the more hacky less elegant solution.
It can actually go in the other direction. Rather then use shell tricks Nix can also use containers under the hood. Overall though the API for docker is superior in terms of editing config files but not switching shells. Additionally the underlying implementation for docker is also superior.
Your main problem is with the API which is just opinionated.
Re: Ask HN: What are some unpopular technologies you wish people knew more about?
#284pen and paper
I just agreed with several other people that we'd start sending handwritten mail to each other.
Re: Ask HN: What are some unpopular technologies you wish people knew more about?
#285Analog computation. I don't mean just vacuum tubes or even electronics at all. Mechanical analog computing is insane when you get down to it. You have special shapes that move against each other and do calculus . We make these mechanical models as analogs of more complex physical systems. We can turn huge calculations into relatively simple machines. That we can roll two weirdly shaped gears together and get an integ…
You can have a look at that pinball machine. You will be amazed. https://youtu.be/ue-1JoJQaEg
Re: Ask HN: What are some unpopular technologies you wish people knew more about?
#286In case you don't fancy visiting all the links: - Tarantool is some sort of in-memory DB with optional persistence - Red is a programming language that has made the odd syntax decision to use {} for strings and [] to define scopes - U++ is one of those all-encompasing C++ frameworks like QT - Lazarus is a Pascal(?) IDE - And FASM is a toolkit for building assemblers I'm struggling to find the common thread across the…
Red is the spiritual successor to Rebol, from which its syntax comes.
Re: Ask HN: What are some unpopular technologies you wish people knew more about?
#287StateCharts - similar to Finite State Machines but in a Tree Data Structure
Re: Ask HN: What are some unpopular technologies you wish people knew more about?
#288Analog computation. I don't mean just vacuum tubes or even electronics at all. Mechanical analog computing is insane when you get down to it. You have special shapes that move against each other and do calculus . We make these mechanical models as analogs of more complex physical systems. We can turn huge calculations into relatively simple machines. That we can roll two weirdly shaped gears together and get an integ…
Nature, almost completely analog, has been around a thousand times longer than humans. How many times has 'evolution' used digital methods to accomplish something? Perhaps we've chosen to switch to digital because we're in a hurry and its easier ... in hopes of, some day, asymptotically approaching the advantages of analog.
Re: Ask HN: What are some unpopular technologies you wish people knew more about?
#289Sphinx [1] gets my vote. It's the docs system that powers most sites in the Python ecosystem so it probably looks familiar to you. I call it a docs system rather than static site generator because the web is just one of many output targets it supports. To tap into its full power you need to author in a markup that predates Markdown called reStructuredText (reST). It's very similar to Markdown (MD) so it's never bothe…
You can use markdown by adding the md suffix to your conf.py and myst_parser [1] to your sphinx extensions. They are starting to work towards full sphinx functionality in myst markdown, too. [1] https://myst-parser.readthedocs.io/en/latest/intro.html [1] https://executablebooks.org/en/latest/blog/2023/new-project-...
I can't recommend this enough! It's such a quality of life improvement to get the powerful dynamic documentation features of rST and Sphinx (and its many extensions), but in the more pleasant and familiar syntax of Markdown. I use MyST + Sphinx for all my project docs now.
This podcast episode is worth a listen for anyone interested in these tools and where they're headed: https://talkpython.fm/episodes/show/354/sphinx-myst-and-pyth...
Re: Ask HN: What are some unpopular technologies you wish people knew more about?
#290Sphinx [1] gets my vote. It's the docs system that powers most sites in the Python ecosystem so it probably looks familiar to you. I call it a docs system rather than static site generator because the web is just one of many output targets it supports. To tap into its full power you need to author in a markup that predates Markdown called reStructuredText (reST). It's very similar to Markdown (MD) so it's never bothe…
I've used Sphinx quite a bit, the syntax is a bit fugly. For markdown's [text](url) one uses `text `_ ...
I think this is also one of my least favorite syntax choices in rST. I second the suggestions to use Sphinx with Markdown via MyST.