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

Post by yeck » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 5:18 PM UTC

otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #384

corethree wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a. Using nix in place of a package manager means dealing with libraries specific to that language. It's still managing different apis. And more potential for bugs and unforeseen problems in custom 3rd party APIs as opposed to the official one. Admit it, you hit tons of problems getting everything to work fine with python. b. C++ is the only one that would benefit from nix here because C++ dependencies are usually ins…

a. you hit tons of problems getting everything to work fine with python - of course, but the maintenance burden is an order of magnitude lower than integrating all this manually. b. No, docker is not a solution. Docker is another problem and a separate maintenance nightmare. (Nix solves maintenance problems at scale, Docker explodes them exponentially. I would not ever recommend using Docker for anything except perso…

Post by adamhp » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 5:46 PM UTC

Taikonerd wrote: post #72

Growing in popularity, but still not as famous as it should be: EdgeDB ( https://EdgeDB.com ) * Graph-relational database * Queries return objects linked to other objects through properties, not rows * ... But it's still Postgres under the hood * Open source

Post by adamhp » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 5:52 PM UTC

abdrehman wrote: post #365

Apache NIFI. It should be used more for building Data Pipelines specifically.

Post by glitchcrab » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 6:55 PM UTC

lannisterstark wrote: post #243

jhot wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to do some professional services work, and magic wormhole was one of the most reliable ways for me to get files to clients who's companies blocked traditional file sharing hosts like Dropbox and Google Drive.

Check out croc, I've been using it for years, and it works pretty great too! https://github.com/schollz/croc

Post by stormfather » Mon, Dec 04, 2023, 9:31 PM UTC

calamari4065 wrote: post #299

8bitsrule wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The main reason is that digital computers are so incredibly, overwhelmingly more flexible than analog. Analog computers are (generally) bespoke single-purpose devices. It really isn't too far off to imagine analog computers as code made physical, with all that entails. Imagine writing a program if every time you wanted to change something you had to cut a new gear, or design a new mechanism, or build a new circuit. I…