6 ms·

SQLite is quite possibly one of the most useful pieces of software ever created. It's small, relatively fast, and unbelivably solid. It's up there with bash, cu

SQLite is quite possibly one of the most useful pieces of software ever created. It's small, relatively fast, and unbelivably solid. It's up there with bash, curl, grep, emacs, and nano: tools that are just so good at their job that we don't even notice how amazing they are. I mean, really. SQLite is remarkable, impressive, and used everywhere, and we never talk about it. Emacs is a remarkably impressive piece of engineering, bash is the world's default shell for a reason, Nano is the newbie's text edior, and, well, just imagine for a second what would happen if grep or curl stopped working.

nine_k 10y ago
> if grep and curl stopped working Did you ever run Windows?
- baq 10y ago
  $ curl --version curl 7.47.1 (x86_64-w64-mingw32) libcurl/7.47.1 OpenSSL/1.0.2g zlib/1.2.8 libidn/1.32 libssh2/1.7.0 librtmp/2.3 Protocols: dict file ftp ftps gopher http https imap imaps ldap ldaps pop3 pop3s rtmp rtsp scp sftp smtp smtps telnet tftp Features: IDN IPv6 Largefile SSPI Kerberos SPNEGO NTLM SSL libz TLS-SRP $ grep --version grep (GNU grep) 2.24 Copyright (C) 2016 Free Software Foundation, Inc. License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>. This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law. Written by Mike Haertel and others, see <http://git.sv.gnu.org/cgit/grep.git/tree/AUTHORS>. $ uname -a MINGW64_NT-6.3 redacted 2.5.0(0.295/5/3) 2016-03-20 18:54 x86_64 Msys $ :)
  - JdeBP 10y ago
    Now crank up PowerShell, which is what I suspect xe is subtly getting at. (-:
- PeCaN 10y ago
  …without installing curl and grep? Nope.
- kwhitefoot 10y ago
  Unfortunately.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- qwertyuiop924 10y ago
  ... Have you ever wondered why nobody tries to port shell scripts?
seagreen 10y ago
It's up there with bash Clearly you've just arrived from some wonderful alternate universe where bash means something different than it does on Earth. Welcome traveler! bash is the world's default shell for a reason Here on Earth that reason is network effects ("If I write it in bash, it will run anywhere!"). Bash is an bad language. If you've mastered bash you can have the honorable feeling of mastering a difficult, ugly, but practical skill (see also: knife-fighting, driving a motor vehicle, running for office). But there's no need to be mean to SQLite by comparing the two.
- jsmthrowaway 10y ago
  Funny, I instead had that reaction to nano being there after I read "good at their job." I mean, that's one way of looking at nano, I suppose, depending on how you define "job"...
  - witty_username 10y ago
    Yeah, nano is good for people like me used to GUI editors but it isn't amazingly good.
  - glormph 10y ago
    I figured the poster was just avoiding naming either text editor that gives around half of the HN population kneejerk responses.
    - JdeBP 10y ago
      Brief versus WordStar yet again? (-: This would cast nano in the rôle of Tedit, of course.
  - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
    Partly because listing emacs or vim would launch a flame war, but Nano's intent is to be a small text editor, friendly enough for newbies, to handle small jobs, like writing an email, or editing /etc/fstab. And it does that pretty well.
djsumdog 10y ago
I've run into a few issues with SQLite when I get to more complex cases. Right joins are a great example. I have to do a lot of searching, stackoverflowing and talking to peeps in #sqlite on freenode to try to figure out how to rewrite more complex queries to work with SQLite. I still like SQLite, and most people don't need anything beyond simple joins, but when you do need some more advanced SQL, it can be a bit challenging.
- qwertyuiop924 10y ago
  Yeah, it's not perfect, because nothing is, but it's pretty damned good.
laurent123456 10y ago
To be fair, we talk about it every time a link from sqlite.org is posted here (/testing.html comes up frequently). What I also like about this project is how well written their documentation is. Thanks to it, it's very easy to read and understand how a particular command or property work and how to use it.

nine_k 10y ago

> if grep and curl stopped working Did you ever run Windows?

baq 10y ago
$ curl --version curl 7.47.1 (x86_64-w64-mingw32) libcurl/7.47.1 OpenSSL/1.0.2g zlib/1.2.8 libidn/1.32 libssh2/1.7.0 librtmp/2.3 Protocols: dict file ftp ftps gopher http https imap imaps ldap ldaps pop3 pop3s rtmp rtsp scp sftp smtp smtps telnet tftp Features: IDN IPv6 Largefile SSPI Kerberos SPNEGO NTLM SSL libz TLS-SRP $ grep --version grep (GNU grep) 2.24 Copyright (C) 2016 Free Software Foundation, Inc. License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>. This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law. Written by Mike Haertel and others, see <http://git.sv.gnu.org/cgit/grep.git/tree/AUTHORS>. $ uname -a MINGW64_NT-6.3 redacted 2.5.0(0.295/5/3) 2016-03-20 18:54 x86_64 Msys $ :)
- JdeBP 10y ago
  Now crank up PowerShell, which is what I suspect xe is subtly getting at. (-:
PeCaN 10y ago
…without installing curl and grep? Nope.
kwhitefoot 10y ago
Unfortunately.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
qwertyuiop924 10y ago
... Have you ever wondered why nobody tries to port shell scripts?

seagreen 10y ago

It's up there with bash Clearly you've just arrived from some wonderful alternate universe where bash means something different than it does on Earth. Welcome traveler! bash is the world's default shell for a reason Here on Earth that reason is network effects ("If I write it in bash, it will run anywhere!"). Bash is an bad language. If you've mastered bash you can have the honorable feeling of mastering a difficult, ugly, but practical skill (see also: knife-fighting, driving a motor vehicle, running for office). But there's no need to be mean to SQLite by comparing the two.

jsmthrowaway 10y ago
Funny, I instead had that reaction to nano being there after I read "good at their job." I mean, that's one way of looking at nano, I suppose, depending on how you define "job"...
- witty_username 10y ago
  Yeah, nano is good for people like me used to GUI editors but it isn't amazingly good.
- glormph 10y ago
  I figured the poster was just avoiding naming either text editor that gives around half of the HN population kneejerk responses.
  - JdeBP 10y ago
    Brief versus WordStar yet again? (-: This would cast nano in the rôle of Tedit, of course.
- qwertyuiop924 10y ago
  Partly because listing emacs or vim would launch a flame war, but Nano's intent is to be a small text editor, friendly enough for newbies, to handle small jobs, like writing an email, or editing /etc/fstab. And it does that pretty well.

djsumdog 10y ago

I've run into a few issues with SQLite when I get to more complex cases. Right joins are a great example. I have to do a lot of searching, stackoverflowing and talking to peeps in #sqlite on freenode to try to figure out how to rewrite more complex queries to work with SQLite. I still like SQLite, and most people don't need anything beyond simple joins, but when you do need some more advanced SQL, it can be a bit challenging.

qwertyuiop924 10y ago
Yeah, it's not perfect, because nothing is, but it's pretty damned good.

laurent123456 10y ago

To be fair, we talk about it every time a link from sqlite.org is posted here (/testing.html comes up frequently). What I also like about this project is how well written their documentation is. Thanks to it, it's very easy to read and understand how a particular command or property work and how to use it.