Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: What are some “10x” software product innovations you have experienced?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

321–330 of 818 posts

Re: Ask HN: What are some “10x” software product innovations you have experienced?

#321

Post by mattmanser »

deckard1 wrote: post #141

Firebug. Every developer from around 2006-2008 knows what I'm talking about. Debugging JS in IE6 was like trying to build a house blindfolded with both arms tied behind your back. Firebug is when JS went from just a web augmentation toy that could silently fail and your web page would still mostly function to becoming a critical function for a web page (many will see this as all a big mistake).

Firebug came out AFTER IEDevToolbar, and IEDevToolbar was superior to Firebug for years for debugging JavaScript.

So not a very good example at all, in fact quite the opposite, it just happened to ride the back of the anti-M$ wave and wasn't at all innovative, copying its features from already existing products.

Conversely, though it was free, IEDevToolbar was only really advertised to MSDN subscribers, so never got much penetration, especially as by then everyone hated IE6 and a lot of Devs worked in Firefox first.

But my company only supported IE6, and when we finally started supporting Firefox, firebug was an annoyingly sub-par experience when debugging js.

Even Chrome's early Dev tools had some sorely missed features when it first came out, as far as I can remember it took them years to support being able to just hold your mouse over a variable and see its value. And because it was a web-page about a web-page you got all these weird bugs. And the CSS editor was (and still is) super annoying with its attempts to cut up your text.

On top of that visual studio also had a JavaScript debugger, I'm sure there were plenty more paid tools you simply didn't know about.

Re: Ask HN: What are some “10x” software product innovations you have experienced?

#322

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

Loughla wrote: post #248
passivate wrote: post #167

Reaper. Its simple, fast, and no licensing bull. Steam. Just works, simple and easy to use. Copy-Paste the Steam folder to your new system to move your entire game library. ZoomIt by Sysinternals - excellent, excellent tool that has improved all my presentations/screen-share sessions. Everything by David Carpenter - super fast system wide search for files that has bookmarks and other features like match using file na…

When Steam first started being a thing, I decried it as the death of physical media and fun game inserts. I vowed never to use it, because of what I perceived as the locked down steam launcher controlling access/ability to shut off access to games that I purchased with my own money. It seemed like too close to a 'license' to play. Then I used it for the first time and realized how stupid easy it was compared to manag…

Years ago, when MS Flight Simulator X came to Steam, I bought it even though I had MSFSX on DVD.

Eliminating the need for the discs as well as removing the silly DRM in favor of Steam's far more sane DRM was worth the $10.

Re: Ask HN: What are some “10x” software product innovations you have experienced?

#323

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

Sohcahtoa82 wrote: post #288
2bitencryption wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was the entrypoint to Firefox for millions of people. Unlike today, back then Firefox had a clearly expressive value proposition: Use this! It has tabs! It will change how you browse the web! Now the only value proposition is some wishy-washy privacy stuff that is much harder to sell people on, even if it's in their best interest.

> Now the only value proposition is some wishy-washy privacy stuff that is much harder to sell people on, even if it's in their best interest. They'll still use Chrome or Edge/IE, but will use NordVPN or ExpressVPN after seeing their favorite YouTuber claim that the VPN protects their data and gives them privacy... ...while still not using an ad blocker, which makes the VPN almost entirely worthless from a privacy pe…

> At most, it blocks your ISP from seeing what you're doing.

In fairness, that is a nontrivial privacy win for a decent number of people.

Re: Ask HN: What are some “10x” software product innovations you have experienced?

#324

Post by dejv »

I guess I would date myself, but:

- syntax highlighting in text editor

- tabs in browsers (in my case that was Firefox before it was called Firefox)

- DVCS, I've started with Bazaar then moved to Git (of course). Used VCS (painful) and SVN (less so) before that.

- REST APIs and discovering Sinatra framework to write them.

- Rails. First time I saw famous "write blog in 15 minutes" my head was blown.

Re: Ask HN: What are some “10x” software product innovations you have experienced?

#325

Post by jaxn »

dragonwriter wrote: post #277
narrator wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember developing in the early 90s and there was no open source coding tools. It was miserable. One had to write everything from scratch or buy expensive libraries.

> I remember developing in the early 90s and there was no open source coding tools. There were open source coding tools in the early 90s (a lot of the GNU tools, including Emacs and GCC, were first released in the mid-to-late 1980s.)

And Matt's Script Archive was mid-90s.

Re: Ask HN: What are some “10x” software product innovations you have experienced?

#326

Post by sangnoir »

namrog84 wrote: post #297
2bitencryption wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This was the entrypoint to Firefox for millions of people. Unlike today, back then Firefox had a clearly expressive value proposition: Use this! It has tabs! It will change how you browse the web! Now the only value proposition is some wishy-washy privacy stuff that is much harder to sell people on, even if it's in their best interest.

I believe opera had tabs for a while before Firefox. It was one of the main reasons I think I used opera for a good long while.

You are correct - Opera had tabs way before Firefox, and Opera had a full mail client as well without feeling bloated or slow.

Re: Ask HN: What are some “10x” software product innovations you have experienced?

#327

Post by lotsofpulp »

SatvikBeri wrote: post #240
aerovistae wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no familiarity with #2 so that's interesting to me-- do you or other people actually use uber/lyft to get to and fro work? Isn't that like $15-20 each way every day, thousands of dollars a year?

It made a big difference for me with occasional trips, I took public transportation to work, but Uber/Lyft meant I could go visit my friends for $10 and 10 minutes instead of $2 and 45 minutes. Note that a car also costs thousands of dollars a year once you factor in everything, Edmunds estimates the true cost of a corolla at $7k/year: https://www.edmunds.com/toyota/corolla/2020/cost-to-own/

I have multiple experiences with Toyota’s driven 200k to 300k miles with just standard repairs. A Corolla costs $20k? $25k?

Let’s say $1k for new tires/brakes/oil changes/filters every 45k miles.

That’s $333 per year for maintenance, and the car lasts 13 to 20 years at 15k miles per year for 200k to 300k miles, so let’s say $2k per year on the high end, $1,200 per year on the low end.

Extremely high liability insurance is $50 a month or less.

Fuel is 10 cents per mile if you assume $3 per gallon and 30 miles per gallon, so $1,500 per year in fuel for 15,000 miles.

$1,500+$50*12+$2k+$333 = $5k per year on the high end.

Excluding insurance and fuel costs, you can push a reliable Toyota/Honda’s costs down to 5 cents per mile or less.

Re: Ask HN: What are some “10x” software product innovations you have experienced?

#328

Post by dopeboy »

jldl805 wrote: post #217
anderspitman wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just a GB. It was also constantly increasing in size, with a live counter to show how much storage you had available. Super gimmicky, but fun. I guess there are probably a lot of people here who are too young to have ever used those early versions. You also had to scrounge forums for an invite code.

I made my account(s) off invite codes and have "just my last name" at gmail dot com as an address... it's one of my most prized possessions, to this day!

Hanging out in IRC channels in early 2000s was how I wasted my teenage years. But I did get a gmail invite out of it leading to my primary email address to this day: arithmetic@gmail.com

Re: Ask HN: What are some “10x” software product innovations you have experienced?

#330

Post by sdesalas »

sfblah wrote: post #252
deckard1 wrote: post #141

Firebug. Every developer from around 2006-2008 knows what I'm talking about. Debugging JS in IE6 was like trying to build a house blindfolded with both arms tied behind your back. Firebug is when JS went from just a web augmentation toy that could silently fail and your web page would still mostly function to becoming a critical function for a web page (many will see this as all a big mistake).

You didn't like debugging with window.alert()?

I remember filling js files with alert messages back in 2004. Imagine the joy debugging a 15k line js codebase back then.
Post reply on HN