I used to think bash was on that list... it seems relatively responsive and predictable. I use it all the time.

But then I realized how often bash has weird issues -- like completion hanging, or inexplicable inability to complete (this could be due to the distro though). Or it just seems easy to get it in a bad state by hitting the wrong keys, or dumping a binary file to the terminal.

And recently I have been looking through the bash source code, and it's a bit horrifying. The reliability is done by brute force of special cases over decades, not by good design.

I like the semantics of the shell language, in that it lets me get things done fast. But I don't like the syntax or the implementation I happen to use. bash is pretty complete, but not well implemented.

Although tmux isn't perfect when there's a lot of scrolling output on account of it being a terminal multiplexer, the only decent replacement I've found is terminator, which is a terminal emulator. But I hate the terminator key bindings, and it doesn't have a option for screen/tmux style shortcuts.

[1] https://superuser.com/questions/417556/is-there-any-way-to-p...

My own programs written in Python... not so lucky. ;-)

At least Chromium seems finally to work on this after more than 5 years https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=44872

I wished I do not need to switch to QuickTime or Safari to have correct bright colors for enjoying videos & images :/

Does it play DVD ISO files ?

Can you use the menus, etc. ?

Just curious ... XBMC back in 2004 could do this (navigate and use DVD menus in a DVD ISO) but then that feature actually went away in the following years, never to return ...

Those are semi-loaded questions. It can and does play .vob files, which is enough if you actually just want to watch the video, which is VLC's primary use case.

It is not a full media manager with additional functionality.

When I play some bought DVDs with VLC the DRM stops the DVD getting to the menu stage (on Linux especially) and I need the menu to change the language for my children who don't always want English[1]. Skipping the menu doesn't let me change the language, and not using the skip-menu option means the DVD won't play. Disney are not alone in this, but are the guilty party that comes to mind.

1. Even better when the nordic regional edition of a film has something crazy like Finnish as the default language, and English isn't there at all, but my children want the voices in Norwegian. So skipping menus goes straight to the film in language that doesn't even make sense to Finns. Thanks DVD producers, there isn't enough frustration in my life but with your help and my money we're reaching levels close to 100%.

https://github.com/FFmpeg/FFmpeg/blob/master/libavcodec/hevc...

I'd be pretty surprised if there was a major difference between them. Maybe some bugs in the rendering path, or one player isn't doing threads properly?

Also what gcb0 said is true as well - but not everyone needs subtitles for their videos. My 'expertise' in media player selection is based on getting the absolute best quality playback for my anime.

My primary reasons for switching from VLC were not due to efficiency - but due to shadow being washed out and the NVidia color issues. Both "fixable" in that you can "improve them" but not quite "remove them entirely". (Both issues are easily Google-able as well)

There are many, many, many image comparisons between VLC and MPC-HC (and sometimes MPV for Linux). The one thing in common is that MPC and MPV both look very similar while VLC always has a washed out look and occasionally faulty colors (by default). Unfortunately, many people are terrible at screenshotting the exact same frame but even from similar frames one can pretty easily spot the differences between VLC and MPC-HC.

Example of the shadow/color differences:

Side-by-side w/ CPU usage difference: http://i.imgur.com/xJnrS2f.jpg

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/176895 (excuse the distortion, I was 1px off on my cropping)

E:

Some people prefer the washed-out look finding it more aesthetically pleasing. That's fine and I'm cool with that, long as I don't need to watch anything with them. Many people also "don't give a shit" because they'd never know the difference without seeing the side-by-side or comparison of the frame. That's fine too - but not something I personally agree with. :) I prefer better quality even if I have to looking for it.

Your two culprits are that someone's YUV->RGB math forgot that Y needs to be expanded from 16-235 to 0-255 - possible but really surprising! - or that one player implements gamma correction and the other doesn't.

Gamma correction might look nice, but it can't be called correct unless you've profiled your monitor, set the brightness level, not changed your ambient lighting levels, and turned off all the nonsense LCD options like "contrast".

BTW, the only rendering bug I ever expect to see is the difference between Rec.601 and Rec.709 colorspace, which just kind of makes green colors look different. So this is pretty extreme!

That's typically my argument, but others simply "don't care" how the author intended, they want what looks better to them. Which is fine - as long as I'm not watching it with them. Because I actually do care how the author intended something to be seen.

e.g. you can get better color output and better subtitle features on mpc-hc

So, just anecdotally, VLC isn't perfect, but I'd agree that it's generally quite close.

http://smplayer.sourceforge.net/

I wanted to install this extension earlier this week, only to discover that it was already installed. This is with VLC 2.2.3 on OS X.

Search by hash has been working well for me so far.

It's UI is optimised for playing video (example: if your window is not fullscreen, but playing it will stay in front). It has smoother playback than vlc, I can actually skip by seconds with my cursors etc.

I just want simultaneous display of multiple subtitle tracks. :(

curl http://blah/blah/some/hidden/network/stream | mplayer -

which I've seen fails on vlc

SQLite is an automatic, and easy, answer. It almost goes without saying at this point, I guess.

vim is everywhere. I like knowing I can always run it no matter where I am or what server/VM I'm logged into. That knowledge provides comfort.

go. I don't actually love the language, but the solidity of it and it's ecosystem is really nice. Everything around go has a patina of workmanship about it; not in a corporate "professional" sense, but more like a well-made wood plane or something.

Perl. Again, I don't entirely love the language, but the incredible backward compatibility (we have ~20 year old code that still runs unmodified!), the rarity of bugs (especially given how big the surface area of a huge language like Perl is), and the overall culture of testing, leads to a pretty nice experience. I feel like I can count on it, even if I might get grumpy at some of the quirks.

Python, for different reasons from Perl. I can come back to Python after years away and find that it's maybe even a simpler (but not less powerful) Python than I used a decade ago. I just poked at Python 3 for the first time a few weeks ago, and found it immediately readable and intuitive. The language is more reliably "Pythonic" every year.

OpenSSH. Always works. Always trustworthy.

Google Inbox. I want to host my own mail (and do, for my business), but nothing is as good as Inbox.

I've had a heap of issues with not receiving notifications for emails that were miscategorised.. or just never popped up on my phone... I check gmail on my desktop every few days just to see if I missed something.

And, now that you mention it, GMail is faster, and I can chew through mail at a much, much faster pace. But, the smarts built into Inbox means I can safely ignore a lot more mail (about half ends up in Promos and Finance and Social categories; all ignorable until I'm looking for something specific or expecting something), which is maybe a worthwhile tradeoff. I don't have to go as fast if I only have half as much mail to think about.

and documentation!

Of course I had no idea how Perl worked, so it looked like someone stuck a bunch of symbols in their nose and mouth then sneezed, but would've been amazing if I had spent a bit of effort.

As another GIS professional I've found that the answer to this question in roughly 100% of the cases is that they have some important application (either third party or in house) that doesn't trivially talk with PostGIS and they don't see the cost saving once they've factored in all the migration costs. So vendor lock-in basically.

https://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.5/static/tutorial-install....

https://docs.mongodb.com/manual/installation/

PostgreSQL tells you "If you are installing a pre-packaged distribution, such as an RPM or Debian package, ignore this chapter and read the packager's instructions instead" whereas MongoDB actually lists specific instructions for each platform (including distro).

It's similar all the way through. They tell you "why" something was done but not necessarily "how" to get something done. And the manual format with chapters simply isn't suited for the web. There is fantastic content there. It just needs someone with a UX hat to structure it in a way to make it easier to use.

The chapter format might not be the most modern way of presenting it, but the actual page-layout is good and i'm coming from google most of the time anyway.

I don't know what you mean by that the "how" isn't there?

I find that Postgres is fractally good in a similar way.

Linux: Most tools of course, as they are made with the Unix philosophy, but these days I'm most surprised by print drivers for Linux. Where in Windows the printer is always magically offline or slow, from Linux I can print and scan very reliably.

Vim is also worth learning, it makes editing much more... relaxed I guess. No longer have to move your mouse to the arrow keys or even the mouse/touchpad to scroll or select. It also helps that it exists on nearly every Unix system you'll ever connect to.

And finally I recently discovered LaTeX, which could be described as markdown on steroids. A little more difficult to get into, but it's easy to create professional documents and have a plain text source (which works nicely with git and other unix tools). If you have trouble getting started in LaTeX, ask me (comment here or see my profile), I also didn't know how to get started for a while.

Edit: Another Windows tool is Notepad++. I have not seen the likes in Linux when it comes to robustness. It has all the basics you need for handling any sort of file that involves manual editing, binary or plain text. If there is no binary editor available for your file of choice, or if you just want to have a quick peak, Notepad++ will do just fine. Beware of really huge files, although I have seen it handle some big things on low RAM machines too.

People often talk about the speed of use, but this is (IMO) a result of its efficiency. I liked your use of the word 'relaxed', I'd add: slow down your actions so you have time to think about what you're doing, almost like narrating your actions.

Vim has a grammar that works well when spoken. Learn Vim's way of saying the action you're performing, then learn the relevant keys, adding them to your vocabulary. If a sentence makes sense in your head, try it and it'll probably work as expected. Say you started with:

"delete 3 words" == d3w

"yank to the end of the line" == y$

From this you could assume these valid:

"delete to the end of the line" == d$

"yank 5 words" == y5w

It takes time, but it builds up when you add a word to your vocab here and there, when you have a concrete use for it. (often one you'll remember from the 'wow, that was cool' moment when you first see it in action)

"delete inside quotes" == di"

"select all of the block" == va{

This isn't a reflection on its state now, but I'm trying to make the point that good software takes time. They've had 13 years to clean it up now, and evidently it's gotten a lot better. But that's worth remembering when judging the crap software that's come out in the last couple years.

Linux printing also used to absolutely suck, so much that CUPS was generally synonymous with the hassles you (used to) need to go through to do practical work with a Linux system. Ubuntu has been an absolute godsend in terms of getting a stable, productive Linux desktop working.

I realize a lot of that is riding on the Debian team, but Canonical has done some fantastic work just testing the thing out on such a wide variety of configurations. It's the distribution I recommend to any of my friends looking to try Linux out for the first time.

Notepad++ used to cheese me off in a previous job where I was basically forced to use it because it couldn't even draw drop-down menus correctly. Ugh. Terrible UI.

I used latex to write a paper for the first time last week, and while i thoroughly enjoyed it, i'm fairly confident there were lots of things I could've done better.

The second most important thing I've found for latex is setting up macros. In TextExpander/AHK I have several dozen Latex macros set up, like

  \tbl3 => \begin{tabular}{ l | c | r }
             a & b & c \\
           \end{tabular}

  while inotifywait *.tex; do sleep 0.2 && pdflatex main.tex && killall -HUP mupdf; done

The only annoyance is that big .tex files (esp. Beamer presentations) may take long to compile, which interrupts the flow. But in that case, it helps to distribute the sources into multiple files and to comment out the source files that are not needed at the moment.

I used latexmk which watches file(s) for changes and rebuilds with pdflatex. It was nice, but made my laptop run real hot, and inotify never really works very well.

Which ST plugin do you use?

[1]: https://packagecontrol.io/packages/LaTeXTools

PDFLaTeX makes it incredibly easy to keep all your graphics in PDF files; it makes them so much nicer to deal with. Inkscape is great for making vector graphics for use in LaTex; keep the source code of the graphics in SVG but save as PDF for LaTeX to use (tell Inkscape to export only the drawing to PDF, not the whole page, and you'll never have to crop or resize your graphics ever again).

Finally, use a modern TeX like XeTeX that directly understands Unicode characters and TrueType fonts.

Import as .pdf not .svg? Got it. It was tricky fiddling with percentages and stuff to get the .svg to fit properly (and look decent).

Thanks! I'll look into XeTex.

http://www.terminally-incoherent.com/blog/2010/02/15/lets-le...

I'm not affiliated in any way with that site but the pedagogy is very approachable. Also it helps to use a site like WriteLatex.com or ShareLatex.com to do the hard setting up part when you're just starting out.

Edit: I see he is no longer a helpdesk guy, and his blog's tagline is (unfortunately) no longer "I will not fix your computer."

I'm not sure there is really a wrong way to use it. If you google every little thing to find a good solution (not manually inserting and formatting references for example), I don't think there is too much to be done better. At least, to my beginner's eyes it doesn't seem like it.

The latter is something i achieved with sleep_until_modified.sh and a shell loop. Pretty rudimentary but functionally equivalent to modern webdev reload-on-write behavior. HUGELY beneficial to my learning latex syntax and behavior and formatting nuances

[1] https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/aa3...

I can reliably ssh into pretty much any server and use default vim. I cannot rely on a given plugin to be installed on the server. The more you customize vim, the less universal your knowledge of vim becomes. It's not a big deal to learn some plugins, but it is worth bringing up if people are talking about the ubiquity of it.

It couldn't even open a 1.2 GB text file when I tried it yesterday. On a 32GB system. Seriously?

Left to over 30 years of growth outside of its intended use case, LaTeX proper does nothing you would need it to, and the packages that you use with it are horribly fragmented. Maybe Latex is good at the things it sets out to implement, but those things aren't what I or anyone else uses it for (creating publication-quality documents). So in considering latex we are forced to also consider the environment of libraries it exists in.

LaTeX brings all the problems you had in the Windows 2000 era of programming into document creation. All your favorites like misleading compiler messages, dependency hell, choosing a compiler, knowing whether or not you have run the compiler enough times to produce a final document (!!!), bad compile environments, inconsistent naming, inconsistent syntax for passing parameters to library calls (!!!), GOTOs.

There is no way to write semantic latex for most documents where you would need it. Here's a fun project: find a way to reference the same footnote or endnote multiple times throughout a document in a way consistent with how you reference anything else (that is, using \label and \ref). Some arcane technicality in the way the counter is set up prevents you from doing this. Instead, you have to create your own global counter, write a function to maintain it, then use this function in lieu of LaTeX's implementation of footnotes.

Every time I want to do anything other than add words to my document, I have to think about whether I want to use Latex's meager facilities, facilities that I had to write, or facilities that someone else invented, then worry about all the quirks in them. If I want to add a table to my document, I need to decide whether it should be a `tabular', `tabular* ' `tabularx', `align', `array', `eqnarray', or `matrix'. Someone has told me once that one of these is very bad and should be avoided unless absolutely necessary, although he didn't tell me why, and I don't remember which one. If I want to make a cell span two columns, I have to remember whether that is the `multicols' package, or the `multicolumn' package. If my table gets too big, I now have to hard-code a split myself, or repeat the entire process and convert my table to a `longtable'. I hope I don't have to wrap anything in a `minipage'.

It baffles me that thinking about these things is prerequisite to creating a document.

The attitude that 'LaTeX is easy' is perpetrated loudly by people that haven't had to use LaTeX very much. It is only tentatively saved by the comprehensive (sometimes, if you're lucky, even readable) documentation of all its quirks.

I am not going to stop using Latex, but no one will ever get me to say that it's easy.

On the other hand, I don't know another environment that makes it as easy as LaTeX makes it. Markdown is easier but far from powerful enough; HTML is nowhere near as easy and just not really made for it; and WYSIWYG editors just suck as a whole. LaTeX seemed to me as everything I was looking for, even if the syntax and methods are from the eighties.

Additionally, enough people use it that support is also not an issue. There are almost certainly other languages that do a similar job in a modern way, but the thing is, my girlfriend studies math and she can read/write these documents too. The network effect works in LaTeX' favor here.

Alfred is absolutely the most game-changing app I've ever been introduced to. I only use it for finding files, searching, opening a page by direct URL, defining words, calculator, translation (via Google), launching apps, and quickly jumping to apps that are already open. It's probably saved me hundreds of hours in clicking around, etc.

I've never purchased the paid version (been using since 2011), but I support them by searching Amazon (results are via affiliate link) when I buy things.

- FastDiff (quickly diff selected finder files) - Hash - https://github.com/BigLuck/alfred2-hash - Menu Bar Search - https://github.com/ctwise/alfred-workflows/tree/master/menu-... - Recent Items - http://www.alfredforum.com/topic/713-recent-items-42-for-alf... - Strip clipboard text formatting - https://github.com/notDavid/alfred-workflow-stripClipboardFo... - Transmit - https://github.com/ramiroaraujo/alfred-transmit-workflow - Tunnelblick - Synonyms - https://github.com/notDavid/alfred-workflow-synonyms

Shift+Insert is the keyboad equivalent of middle-click, BTW. Apple (or the ecosystem) doesn't have a monopoly on keyboard shortcuts; in fact, it has been my experience that Apple UIs focus on touchpad usage too much, to the point of completely ignoring and skipping keyboard shortcut support.

I have an Alfred workflow with a hotkey of COMMAND+OPTION+CTRL+P that searches Dash. I then type whatever it is that I'm searching for and Alfred displays the likely matches sorted by the docset preference order in Dash. It makes me feel psychic and I can't imagine working without it now.

It's the first feature I show people who ask, "Why use Alfred instead of Spotlight?"

What does it do that Spotlight can't?

I use Alfred workflow with dash [2], so i can type "go fmt.Println" into alfred, and jump straight to the man-page.

I also use Alfred workflow with SnippetsLab [3], to open my personal notes in a similar fashion.

    1: https://www.alfredapp.com/help/workflows/
    2: https://kapeli.com/dash

    3: https://www.renfei.org/snippets-lab/

This way of navigating means I have to use the trackpad pretty infrequently.

My only complaint about these tools, is that I'm stuck in Windows at work :-(

For another software I use daily and can no longer live without, it would be tmux.

Edit: Found it. For those interested, you need the Alfred Powerpack and Dash installed. Go to Dash Preferences -> Integration & click 'Alfred'.

It is hard for me to grasp how in 2016 a piece of software can be so ignorant to such a simple behavior.

But: It took me a few attempts to start using Alfred. I personally only use it to open files and programs and to search in files. The default behavior with pressing space twice is very annoying if you want to open text files. So I tweaked the settings a bit and now it works for me:

Default Results:

    Essentials: - all unchecked but *Applications*.
    Extras: only check: Folders, Text Files, Documents, Images.

That's what works for me and replaced Spotlight.

The paid version is totally worth it for how much time it saves me. I also really enjoy the theming and file management features (which are paid only).

Sometimes I think Chromebooks stole my idea. :p

I use CTRL CTRL, and I have my command and control keys switched, so it's really CMD CMD on the left corner of my keyboard, which is very convenient, but caps lock is a great idea also.

Alfred's indexer is superior to Spotlight's, and is much saner in what it prioritizes for viewing over what it doesn't.

The changelog goes back all the way to 2002, but it's been there for waaay longer. ( http://ghisler.com/whatsnew.htm )

I hope he continues to make a healthy income from it. It's litterally the best piece of shareware in the world in my eyes, that i've happily bought a license for.

Super Awesome Footnote: I just found out that you can still get the version 6.5, which is every bit as stable as v8.51a, built for Windows 3.1 : http://www.ghisler.com/wcmd16.htm

    apt-get install mc

Can you share why you find it useful? Thanks!

Long story short, let me sum up some of my favorite features:

    - Tab to switch between panels
    - Navigate with arrow keys through the files list 
      (very handy if you have it on 'brief' view, especially since you can walk 
      through whole directories with left/right arrow until you hit the '..')
    - CTRL + F1/ CTRL+F2 to select drive for the left or right panel
    - Using any type of packer (zip,arj,7z, etc) as a directory by just hitting 
      enter on it to see the files inside, view them, extract, add and remove
    - CTRL + Pagedown to navigate even into some packaged files that aren't 
      normally accessible as folders (like .msi)
    - F-Keys with a clear indicator at the bottom to move and copy files, insert 
      to select and move to the next file
    - F3 for an all you can eat file viewer that can switch to different view modes
      like HEX by pressing 1,2,3,4 and doesn't bork on large files
    - F4 launches your favorite editor
    - Hit space on a directory to compute the full size recursively 
    - ALT+F7 for find-in-files and fast file search
    - The most powerful multi-rename tool you could ever wish for in the file menu
    - Built-In FTP Client (CTRL + F) with a favorite list, queue list 
      and resume from queue list.
    - Download any random file (with resume and queue) using CTRL+N (HTTP/FTP)
    - Plugin support to enhance the thing with stuff like SFTP/FTPS support, 
      which you can open from the 'network' drive
    - Background copy for most operations (in it's own thread, and with pause)
    - Double click the file path at the top of the panel for a popup hotlist where
      you can add favorite jump-to spots
    - CTRL + Arrow key opposite to the current panel opens the folder under the 
      cursor in the opposite panel
    - CTRL + UP arrow on a folder opens it in a new tab (which you can even lock to
      persist them or have handy nav points)
    - Numpad + to select files in a folder according to a wildcard
    - Numpad * inverts currrent selection or selects all
    - Pack some files using CTRL + F5 on a selection

https://www.gpsoft.com.au/

I've not used Total Commander or Directory Opus much, but I figured DOpus was something you might be interested in.

It is somewhat more/easier configurable than mc or FAR. I know you can get dozens of plugins for all these actions but totalcmd has the right amount of stuff I need and is not bloated. Been using it for almost 15 years.

It has tabs, which is great for development and quickly jumping between directories in the same window.

http://imgur.com/a/4toXv

The two panels allows me to quickly switch also in different contexts. Lots of handy hotkeys are available.

TC ultima prime is a package with lots of useful Windows apps like Notepad++ included http://tcup.eu

http://www.farmanager.com/index.php?l=en

Files auto save, so a crash, or even accidental close will not cause you to lose anything. Also handles massive files, which is nice. On top of being a nice, very configurable code editor,

This is hands-down the best and most reliable piece of software I've encountered. It's insanely flexible (hello, org mode!), and it is pretty much where I live at work.

Almost never fails me. And if a job changes or a work policy changes and I have to switch from Windows to Mac to Linux or whatever, it makes no difference. I clone a repo with my settings and packages, and I'm pretty much done. Maybe change the path to my repls or node, but for the most part, I can be up and running on a new machine and ready to dev in a few minutes.

Absolutely love this, and never have stability problems.

--Discovery. The search function has some weird responses sometimes, but I'm astounded how frequently the "Hints" feature finds documents about relatives that I'd never have found on my own. Ancestry's search has a huge understanding of which names might be mixed up with others -- I once found a census record from the late 19th century that had both a husband AND wife's name incorrectly tagged, but Ancestry found it anyway.

--Intuitive interface. After some initial confusion on the mobile app, it's been smooth sailing. Not only can you pull facts out of documents and attach them to relatives, but Ancestry preserves the "citations" so you can go back and figure out, "hm, how do I know so-and-so's birthday?" or "which facts did I already pull out of this record?" You can also link one record to multiple people in one action.

--An unimaginably broad corpus of documents. This one isn't really the software, I guess, but the amount of data Ancestry has access to is unbelievable. I figured out my great-grandmother had a child as a teenager (with a man who was not my great-grandfather) that nobody in my family ever talked about. I found the full text of a 300-year-old will from my sixth great-grandfather while I was sitting on my toilet.

Anyway, it's good.

I don't know if better alternatives exist because it has just been rock-solid for the last 12 years that I've been using it. I've used it in multi-monitor and machine desktop setups (e.g. an Apple laptop paired with a Windows desktop and linux desktop for enterprisey cubicle development), as well as to let me drive my gaming and media PC from my couch using an Apple laptop.

I was a bit bummed that the pricing model went from free-as-in-beer to free-as-in-speech, but couldn't be happier to pay $10 for a lifetime license.

I feel it belongs in this thread because even when I've neglected to upgrade various machines, or upgraded OSs on machines with the application installed, it just continues to hum along. I can count on one hand the number of times I've had to deal with any problems in any capacity.

1. Ease of install; and 2. Backwards compatibility (Ubuntu 14.04's synergy just couldn't work with Arch's)

I've never found it to be reliable in any configuration. I've bought it at least a couple of times on different accounts. Love the idea, and when it works, it is fantastic. But I can't say that it is reliable at all.

My problem is that once the guest machine goes to sleep, I can't seem to wake it via Synergy. Is this expected behavior? I have WoL enabled, so theoretically I should be able to just move my mouse over to the sleeping monitor to wake it up.

You'd need to patch the synergy server to send a WoL magic packet[1] to wake up the client whenever it sends a message that might hit a client that's asleep. (some systems might support something other than the standard magic packet, but I don't know of anything else that works consistently cross platform.) Might also need to look at making sure the client connection comes back up clean and have some delay to make sure it's ready to receive whatever message started the process, and doesn't timeout while waking up.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wake-on-LAN#Magic_packet

I wouldn't have anticipated it, but this is an critical feature for me. Without WoL, I need to have a mouse/keyboard attached to the guest machine, which completely defeats the purpose of using Synergy.

I was hating maven, until I started using IntelliJ. I don't remember ever Eclipse going to zero error count on a maven project whereas the project would just compile if maven was used outside of Eclipse.

IntelliJ just works. FTW it has Eclipse key-mappings as well.

When eclipse gave me that error message I immediately wrote it off as useful software.

Also it is dog slow compared to intellij

The stability wasn't as bad as the slowness. Also, OSGI seems to be a philosophy or cult. Things are just generally complex and bloated.

File | Invalidate Caches / Restart ...

Then the add-ons and extensions, which enabled you to do something entirelly different or bring back an old behaviour. I still use oldbar since the «awesome bar» might be too awesome for me. Also, the tabs groups, if you are like me, a hoarder of to-read articles, and leaving things for later, you can have a clean slate without losing those tabs.

And if you want to look behind the scenes, you have about:config in which you can bring behind some of the old features.

And it's everything open source! I know Firefox has suffered a lot because it's seen as slow, but I open Firefox once a day and never have complained about it.

It's a pretty expensive stack for doing some pretty particular weird stuff but I kind of love using it. I would at least say that the prices for the hardware aren't too much higher than the competition, and the software side is way way better than the competition. I have never met a person not employed by NI who liked NI software AND equipment as much as I do. Honestly, I don't think I've ever talked to someone who used it the way I do, though...

Swear I wasn't paid to write this. Figured people might have written this stuff off a long time ago and I wanted to toss some respect its way.

Interfaces are great, in terms of putting together "75% tools" (ones that aren't perfect or polished, but get the job done). Being able to pull all sorts of data from an active robot and relay it to the users in an easy-to-design interface was awesome.

I still wish there were a good open-source version of some parts of LabVIEW.

(I also was not paid to write this. I just loved the dev environment. I never looked at data quite the same way again.)

I always loved how it made such difficult things so easy, while other languages' "simple" matters like loops required mental gymnastics. It's a great tool for its job.

Meld is the equivalent under Linux.

Chocolatey (https://chocolatey.org/)

VsVim for Visual Studio (https://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/59ca71b3-a4a3...)

Everything (https://www.voidtools.com/)

Wox (http://www.getwox.com/)

and of course PowerShell

Vrapper for Eclipse, does the job, the Vim plugin in Intellij sucks as well but still better than VsVim.

The Xcode version is ok.

Few versions ago, there was that nasty bug in VsVim where it would throw an exception if you save an unedited file ...

A very close second is the ext4 filesystem, but I don't know if this qualifies as software. I've done all kind of stupid things when formatting or unplugging drives and have never lost data. Full-disk encryption on everything and never a problem. SO reliable. I was doing a full backup to two separate drives at once, one external and one SATA internal. The power went out and I wasn't using a UPS. When the power came back on, everything was still fine but I was worried about data corruption so I plugged in yet another, my last good external drive with a known good copy of everything to compare against. Then the power went out again! I didn't even shout or curse, that's how mad I was. No data loss though, everything resumed from mid-backup and happily continued.

50k messages/day is pretty low throughout and under that load it should plod through just fine.

Under much higher loads than that (10's - 100's millions of messages day) I've seen it die in a pretty ungraceful manner. At that scale, Kafka is a good candidate.

When I think of reliability, I think of Postgres: it works well, and it's hard to make it not work reliably. With RabbitMQ, it's hard to make it work reliably.

Can confirm, it's extremely easy to make Python, Java and PHP talk to each other. I haven't found anything it can't do yet, and it's not hogging resources either.

Ended up just writing a simple file system based queue in Golang and it's working spectacularly. Just let the SSD do the work. Couple hundred loc all told. We rarely crack 10-15% cpu and memory use sits statically at around 30mb.

Would be interested in seeing your queue, if it were public?

Not as pleased with the Windows version, but it's serviceable

Man, this topic has done nothing but remind me how far I am outside the "software development mainstream". Vim? Git? Are there seriously that many developers who enjoy using such unusable software?

Vim is highly usable as a power-user tool. Its logical and has a few primitives that can easily be chained and built-up into larger features.

A child with a keyboard that has prerecorded music on it has much more fun with it than they would with a grand piano. And that's perfectly fine! However, if you're a professional pianist, you're going to want to go the Steinway route, even though it takes decades of practice to really make sense on one.

(Perhaps violins would make more sense as an example?)

For me, Git is the worst software I've been compelled to use since Lotus Notes. I think it's terrible. I would never use it if I didn't absolutely have to as a condition of employment.

It's relative to other VCS systems in this case.

> Vim?

As a primary editor, I get the dislike and confusion from non-power users, but for a command line editor, it's just so much better than anything else.

I'm actively looking at alternatives now.

I call it my 'Vim of audio'. It was written by the creator of Winamp.