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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?

#221

Post by carso »

kaycebasques wrote: post #59

Sphinx [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-...

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

#222

Post by jodrellblank »

fourside wrote: post #5

OP, this post would be more impactful if you included a brief description of what the tools do and why you think they should be highlighted.

Same for every comment. You (not you, other commenters) "wish people knew more about X" but can't be bothered to write more than the acronym? Downvote. Explain what it is, why you care enough to comment it in this thread, why anyone else might be interested, link to a page, something, anything.

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

#223

Post by aragilar »

gaganyaan wrote: post #123
sevagh wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Presumably it also can fill the role of conda/mamba i.e. also managing C/C++ libraries in the same way in the nix environment, isolated from the system libraries?

Yep, it can lock down exact versions of those libraries as well, which is great for not mucking about with lib versions between even different Ubuntu versions, not to mention distros or macOS.

Except nix doesn't support Windows, which is best reason to use conda (having to support Windows).

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

#224

Post by quickthrower2 »

RheingoldRiver wrote: post #33

Most people know about MediaWiki even if they don't realize they do, because it powers Wikipedia, but I wish more people used it for documentation. You can create highly specialized templates in Lua, and there's a RDBMS extension called Cargo that gives you some limited SQL ability too. With these tools you can build basically an entirely custom CMS on top of the base MW software, while retaining everything that's gr…

It is a PITA from an ops point of view unless you use vanilla with no extensions. Each upgrade tends to break a bunch of extensions and you have to hunt around for solutions.

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

#226

Post by thijsvandien »

QuadrupleA wrote: post #26

Bottle.py: uber-fast and simple python web microframework, about 3x faster, saner, and more memory-efficient than Flask in my experience: https://github.com/bottlepy/bottle Fossil: distributed version control and much more in a single executable, from the creators of SQLite: https://fossil-scm.org/

In the same vein, I'd name Tornado (www.tornadoweb.org). Also rather small and comprehensible, but with full async support that's evolved extremely nicely. Generally I love how well-designed and maintained it is.

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

#228

Post by entropie »

RheingoldRiver wrote: post #33

Most people know about MediaWiki even if they don't realize they do, because it powers Wikipedia, but I wish more people used it for documentation. You can create highly specialized templates in Lua, and there's a RDBMS extension called Cargo that gives you some limited SQL ability too. With these tools you can build basically an entirely custom CMS on top of the base MW software, while retaining everything that's gr…

Mediawiki is huge and very complex. Why not something more simple like instiki?

Personally I would prefer a wiki with git backend. I wrote one [1] but I dont recommend using it.

https://github.com/entropie/oy

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

#229

Post by jhot »

touseefliaqat wrote: post #227

Magic Wormhole: https://magic-wormhole.io/ An easy and secure file transfer program. I use it almost everyday since I discovered it. Author has a very good video on it at pycon-2016: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFrTqQw0_3c

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.

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

#230

Post by ElectricalUnion »

corethree wrote: post #210
ParetoOptimal wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 the task it was designed to be used for. 1) not just as well because docker is repeatable, not reproducible 2) not if you need GPU acceleration which is a headache in docker, but not…

>1) not just as well because docker is repeatable, not reproducible Not sure what you're saying here but most likely you're referring to some obscure pedantic difference. Effectively speaking docker and nix shell achieve similar objectives. >2) not if you need GPU acceleration which is a headache in docker, but not Nix shells This is true. But this is the only clear benefit I see. >- devenv.sh - arion - https://flaku…

https://martinfowler.com/bliki/ReproducibleBuild.html and https://wiki.debian.org/ReproducibleBuilds and https://reproducible-builds.org/ says just because something is "repeatable", doesn't mean it is "reproducible".
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