Ask HN: What was the best software that you used during 2022?

This page summarizes the projects mentioned and recommended in the original post on news.ycombinator.com

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  • Windows Terminal

    The new Windows Terminal and the original Windows console host, all in the same place!

    What was the best software (applications, services, frameworks, compilers, whatever) that you used during 2022?

    For me, the following tools made my Windows development environment substantially better:

    - Windows Terminal (https://github.com/microsoft/terminal)

  • iTerm2

    iTerm2 is a terminal emulator for Mac OS X that does amazing things.

  • InfluxDB

    Power Real-Time Data Analytics at Scale. Get real-time insights from all types of time series data with InfluxDB. Ingest, query, and analyze billions of data points in real-time with unbounded cardinality.

  • authelia

    The Single Sign-On Multi-Factor portal for web apps

  • Caddy

    Fast and extensible multi-platform HTTP/1-2-3 web server with automatic HTTPS

    Caddy [0] has been an absolute joy to work with. I switched this year from nginx for my sideproject-hosting VPS. Just letting it handle the SSL certs and configuring a static site or a reverse proxied route in literally 3 lines of config is really nice.

    I'm planning on adding Authelia [1], Prometheus and Grafana Loki to the mix soon, which should all integrate nicely :)

    [0] https://caddyserver.com/

  • TablePlus

    TablePlus macOS issue tracker

    - TablePlus is a greate database client.. It is simple but powerful. Can connect to any rdbms out there, fast and stable. (https://tableplus.com)

    - Kaleidoscope is the best diff / merge gui app I have used. (https://kaleidoscope.app)

  • babashka

    Native, fast starting Clojure interpreter for scripting

    one combination I came to really love this year is babashka (https://github.com/babashka/babashka) + websocat (https://github.com/vi/websocat). I wrote about a method of live web programming with this pair at https://github.com/whacked/cow/blob/main/a%20technique%20for...

    babashka isn't strictly necessary; you can also pipe plain text, but pushing hiccup expressions to the browser DOM from the REPL with instant feedback has opened a new world of interactive programming for me.

  • websocat

    Command-line client for WebSockets, like netcat (or curl) for ws:// with advanced socat-like functions

    one combination I came to really love this year is babashka (https://github.com/babashka/babashka) + websocat (https://github.com/vi/websocat). I wrote about a method of live web programming with this pair at https://github.com/whacked/cow/blob/main/a%20technique%20for...

    babashka isn't strictly necessary; you can also pipe plain text, but pushing hiccup expressions to the browser DOM from the REPL with instant feedback has opened a new world of interactive programming for me.

  • WorkOS

    The modern identity platform for B2B SaaS. The APIs are flexible and easy-to-use, supporting authentication, user identity, and complex enterprise features like SSO and SCIM provisioning.

  • cow

    bovine word herd aka collection of writing (by whacked)

    one combination I came to really love this year is babashka (https://github.com/babashka/babashka) + websocat (https://github.com/vi/websocat). I wrote about a method of live web programming with this pair at https://github.com/whacked/cow/blob/main/a%20technique%20for...

    babashka isn't strictly necessary; you can also pipe plain text, but pushing hiccup expressions to the browser DOM from the REPL with instant feedback has opened a new world of interactive programming for me.

  • Home Assistant

    :house_with_garden: Open source home automation that puts local control and privacy first.

  • excalidraw

    Virtual whiteboard for sketching hand-drawn like diagrams

  • dim

    Dim, a media manager fueled by dark forces.

    I've been amassing a library which I've exposed to some family members via Tailscale

    Dim (https://github.com/Dusk-Labs/dim) is also a decent shout.

  • Rack

    The virtual Eurorack studio (by VCVRack)

  • nvi2

    A multibyte fork of the nvi editor for BSD

    nvi2 [0]: I got to like the simplicity of nvi when installing Void Linux on my laptop, but it had some annoying bugs that made me switch to nvi2. In general, it feels like `good' software; powerful enough by virtue of being a 1:1 vi clone with a few crucial improvements (multibyte, multi-undo, etc.), but simple enough to hack on if I miss some feature. Though no autocomplete means it's not suitable for more verbose languages, like Java.

    QuickJS [1]: qjscalc is my go-to scientific calculator, and qjs my go-to JavaScript implementation for simple programs. The C interface is very nice to use, too. All in all, it feels very much like a "complete" engine, even if not quite as fast as one with JIT.

    w3m [2]: Somewhat lacking as a web browser, but a very good pager. Would take it over less any day. Also has the best table display of any text-mode browser, supports inline images, and is rather extensible.

    Wine [3]: It's gotten so good that I no longer have to dual boot Windows. Still not perfect, but definitely on my list of "good software".

    [0]: https://github.com/lichray/nvi2

    [1]: https://bellard.org/quickjs/

    [2]: https://github.com/tats/w3m

    [3]: https://www.winehq.org/

  • w3m

    Debian's w3m: WWW browsable pager

    nvi2 [0]: I got to like the simplicity of nvi when installing Void Linux on my laptop, but it had some annoying bugs that made me switch to nvi2. In general, it feels like `good' software; powerful enough by virtue of being a 1:1 vi clone with a few crucial improvements (multibyte, multi-undo, etc.), but simple enough to hack on if I miss some feature. Though no autocomplete means it's not suitable for more verbose languages, like Java.

    QuickJS [1]: qjscalc is my go-to scientific calculator, and qjs my go-to JavaScript implementation for simple programs. The C interface is very nice to use, too. All in all, it feels very much like a "complete" engine, even if not quite as fast as one with JIT.

    w3m [2]: Somewhat lacking as a web browser, but a very good pager. Would take it over less any day. Also has the best table display of any text-mode browser, supports inline images, and is rather extensible.

    Wine [3]: It's gotten so good that I no longer have to dual boot Windows. Still not perfect, but definitely on my list of "good software".

    [0]: https://github.com/lichray/nvi2

    [1]: https://bellard.org/quickjs/

    [2]: https://github.com/tats/w3m

    [3]: https://www.winehq.org/

  • quickjs

    Public repository of the QuickJS Javascript Engine.

    nvi2 [0]: I got to like the simplicity of nvi when installing Void Linux on my laptop, but it had some annoying bugs that made me switch to nvi2. In general, it feels like `good' software; powerful enough by virtue of being a 1:1 vi clone with a few crucial improvements (multibyte, multi-undo, etc.), but simple enough to hack on if I miss some feature. Though no autocomplete means it's not suitable for more verbose languages, like Java.

    QuickJS [1]: qjscalc is my go-to scientific calculator, and qjs my go-to JavaScript implementation for simple programs. The C interface is very nice to use, too. All in all, it feels very much like a "complete" engine, even if not quite as fast as one with JIT.

    w3m [2]: Somewhat lacking as a web browser, but a very good pager. Would take it over less any day. Also has the best table display of any text-mode browser, supports inline images, and is rather extensible.

    Wine [3]: It's gotten so good that I no longer have to dual boot Windows. Still not perfect, but definitely on my list of "good software".

    [0]: https://github.com/lichray/nvi2

    [1]: https://bellard.org/quickjs/

    [2]: https://github.com/tats/w3m

    [3]: https://www.winehq.org/

  • wsltty

    Mintty as a terminal for Bash on Ubuntu on Windows / WSL

    - WSLtty (https://github.com/mintty/wsltty)

    Better than the Windows Terminal for WSL. You can work in tmux without getting strange visual artifacts, and allows you to view sixel graphics in console! Fair warning though, I only installed it about two weeks ago, so I can't claim I've battle-tested it though.

  • stable-diffusion-webui

    Stable Diffusion web UI

    I've played around with many SD frameworks but I typically use: https://github.com/AUTOMATIC1111/stable-diffusion-webui since it has a lot of features and usually works well but it does have quirks/bugs that can be irritating. I use this webui on google colab (check "online services" in readme)

    I have a M1 Max and have mostly avoided running SD on my machine since many SD implementations are built for windows or linux, supporting apple silicon had been less of a priority. Many of these frameworks will work on an M1 but i find using colab is simpler with similar performance.

    However, since apple has released[1] Core-ML support SD models I have been trying some native apps like Mochi-diffusion[2] they seem to work well but are not yet as feature rich as the older webuis

    1: https://github.com/apple/ml-stable-diffusion

  • mame

    MAME

    MAME with the Pegasus front-end.

    I was able to pull together a retrogaming system and show it off to my neighbors kids. And the availablity of controllers like the 8BitDo Pro allow for a fully functional system.

    https://github.com/mamedev/mame

    https://pegasus-frontend.org/

  • pegasus-frontend

    A cross platform, customizable graphical frontend for launching emulators and managing your game collection.

    MAME with the Pegasus front-end.

    I was able to pull together a retrogaming system and show it off to my neighbors kids. And the availablity of controllers like the 8BitDo Pro allow for a fully functional system.

    https://github.com/mamedev/mame

    https://pegasus-frontend.org/

  • GitUp

    The Git interface you've been missing all your life has finally arrived.

    I thought Windows Sandbox would be more useful but over time I just haven't fired it up... I kind of forgot about it. I do use Hyper-V.

    Every Windows user should run WizTree on their personal machines at least once a year to get a lightning fast report on disk space usage. Cleanup should start wih the largest items or you're just wasting your time! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33893815#33894842

    Bitvise SSH Server is also now free for personal use. I've been using it for over a decade since it offered simple multifactor authentication before OpenSSH (IIRC) and can block most bots by client identifier (libssh) -- security through obscurity works spectacularly here because OpenSSH does not yet support this. Their free-as-in-beer SSH client is a great GUI for port forwarding, SFTP, etc. but I dislike the built-in terminal's clipboard handling.

    A Mac-only recommendation: https://gitup.co a GPL3 Git client with a unique UI and undo. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27579701&p=2#27580659

    If you use Pandora, check out the pianobar cli. For Twitch, there is Chatty (+streamlink cli & VLC).

    I set up signald with a Google Voice number but haven't continued down the path of automating Signal.

    I tried Tailscale (2021?) but it seemed a bit early, couldn't log out yet. So I went with ZerotTier. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30284754

  • SaaSHub

    SaaSHub - Software Alternatives and Reviews. SaaSHub helps you find the best software and product alternatives

NOTE: The number of mentions on this list indicates mentions on common posts plus user suggested alternatives. Hence, a higher number means a more popular project.

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