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Ask HN: What software sparks joy when using?

39 points by newswasboring 3y ago

I've spent my last few hours working with Jira-Align. I am beginning to hate computers at this point. To up lift my mood I'd like to use something which sparks joy. Does anyone have any suggestions?

sourcecodeplz 3y ago
Sublime text, Windows, Steam, VLC, OBS, Winamp, Chrome, 7-zip, Snipping Tool
- anonymoushn 3y ago
  What did you do to your Windows?
austin-cheney 3y ago
Open Media Vault, Photo Prism, VLC, WinAmp, Flashpoint, eXoDOS
- hkt 3y ago
  A lover of the old school. I'll never forget how much winamp kicks the llamas ass.
- torunar 3y ago
  +1 for WinAmp (version 2.9 specifically). Runs without issues on every single Windows OS I've been using through my life (98, XP, 7, 8, 10), supports obscure file formats through plugins, has everything that's needed for music player and no blot whatsoever.
hkt 3y ago
Cozy (audio books for Linux) youtube-tui (allows local management of YouTube saves and playlists, written in the frankly lovely ratatui framework) Iotas (nextcloud enabled notes software)
klez 3y ago
Nothing comes to my mind that is not a game, sorry.
lelanthran 3y ago
My default setup for writing C[1] literally puts me into a good mood when I start it up. Full-screen uxterm, with vim with 3 splits, LHS for a terminal. Multiple tabs when necessary, proper syntax highlighting (I use a monochrome/shades of grey color scheme), with Guake mapped to ctrl-~ and 9 workspaces arranged in a 3x3 grid.
- gaws 3y ago
  > proper syntax highlighting (I use a monochrome/shades of grey color scheme) Let's see it.
  - lelanthran 3y ago
    >> proper syntax highlighting (I use a monochrome/shades of grey color scheme) > Let's see it. https://pasteboard.co/pfI4JQY7pBlr.png https://pasteboard.co/pfI4JQY7pBlr.png
blowski 3y ago
I really enjoy writing code, especially when learning something new, or feeling mastery over what I already know. JetBrains IDEs help with that a lot and I genuinely love it. Claude or ChatGPT let me bash out my frustrations. But, honestly, when I feel like that it's often best to get away from the computer entirely. Go for a walk, read a book, spend time with friends, do some old fashioned craft - whatever floats your boat.
- freetime2 3y ago
  JetBrains is definitely one of my favorite software companies.
anjork 3y ago
vim
- sam_lowry_ 3y ago
  Yup, especially vim mode pretty much everywhere. Dunno how people edit code without vim.
robertlagrant 3y ago
I'd suggest not software at all.
- sourcecodeplz 3y ago
  Yes, pen & paper ftw. Get some stamps and envelopes too, then start playing chess via correspondence.
  - aloisdg 3y ago
    lichess.org would be my pick. Awesome software
  - 0xEF 3y ago
    Might as well bring back play-by-post Dungeons & Dragons while we're at it. I know it's still going in a more modern capacity on myth-weavers.com and other sites, but I miss the mail version, chore that it was.
gryn 3y ago
Nit really spark joy but more if a relief from everything that seems to need a database is obsidian and the community plugins. Your database is your markdown files which mean I don't have to rely on it can edit the files from terminal when I want.
onion2k 3y ago
whimsical.com is a really nice diagram builder that just works. Everything is intuitive. I've built some reasonably complex diagrams in it without every needing to refer to a help page. It's great. I'll also give Excel a shout. It's brilliant. The learning curve is steep, but once you're there it's a joy to use.
- eternityforest 3y ago
  Excel was the peak of programming by end users. One of the only apps ever to create a model that gives users that much power to do things on their own. I rarely use it since I don't generally work with that kind of arbitrary data hands-on much, and I don't tend to use a lot of math outside of code, but whenever I do it's usually great
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
zarzavat 3y ago
Not current by any means but the original TextMate. Beautiful in its simplicity and you felt like you were using the editor of the future, which you were because everybody uses TM grammars now.
arespredator 3y ago
HashiCorp Nomad
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Y_Y 3y ago
Monty Python's Complete Waste of Time https://www.mobygames.com/game/1975/monty-pythons-complete-waste-of-time/ https://www.mobygames.com/game/1975/monty-pythons-complete-w...
uniqueuid 3y ago
What consistently amazes and pleases me is software that cleverly uses algorithms and data structures to prevent complexity. In particular, everything CRDT-like still seems like magic to me. So I'm unreasonably excited by bittorrent, storage based on consistent hashing, and rsync (rolling checksums are just amazing). Interestingly I hate distributed consensus with a passion because it always seems to achieve the opposite - causing more complexity.
blueappconfig 3y ago
Starting Blender and changing to Cycles render mode and seeing how the shadow falls over the items you place has always felt special to me.
Euphorbium 3y ago
Most adobe products.
achenet 3y ago
the Helix text editor. the fish shell. atuin. Linux with Sway window manager.
strogonoff 3y ago
Sourcehut, Superkey (if I don’t want to use the mouse then I don’t have to), Orion (browser), Zulip (Web, their mobile app can be frustrating).
abhinavk 3y ago
Is there something like /r/eyebleach for software where you can go at the end of day? That being said, the best would be no screen at all and some greenery.
- vasco 3y ago
  The hack for that is walking the dog after work.
rom16384 3y ago
Deluxe Paint, Turbo C, Krita
davikr 3y ago
I will never go back to using Windows Explorer & Taskbar after downloading Altap Salamander and StartAllBack. Also, "Everything" for searching.
- justusthane 3y ago
  Everything is so great. In addition to my local drive at work I also have it set up to index a huge network drive, and I can actually find things.
hilux 3y ago
I remember first using Expensify after years of wrangling various ERP monstrosities. Serious joy.
- mmikeff 3y ago
  In a similar vein, I had a Pleo payment card at a previous job, and the speed with which it notified me on my phone when I had paid on the card, prompting me to take a picture of the receipt, always made me smile. More often than not the notification came through before the receipt had even printed.
andrewstuart 3y ago
ChatGPT.
- freetime2 3y ago
  ChatGPT is amazing. Even when it is completely hallucinating, the fact that it can do so with such a nicely worded response just puts a smile on my face.
eternityforest 3y ago
Poetry, Pipx, VSCode, pre-commit, ruff, MyPy, Make(When used for non-C related stuff). Recent GIMP versions, Realthunder's fork of FreeCad, PrusaSlicer, neofetch, Ardour, SculptGL, Vorta/Borg, Git Cola
- cynicalsecurity 3y ago
  What do you like about VSCode?
  - eternityforest 3y ago
    It's incredibly feature rich and doesn't require a ton of time investment to set up. The command pallet lets you have quick access to things you don't use that often that I'd otherwise forget in the months between uses. It handles pretty much everything about development. I can have my terminal in the bottom, any problems detected in the current file on the right. It's a perfectly good Git merging tool too. The debugger is very easy to use, and it's got a ton of extensions that are easy to manage. It's even got settings sync in the cloud to keep track of it.
- freetime2 3y ago
  Never tried PrusaSlicer (only ever used Cura), but every time I go to 3d print something I am just astounded at how well slicers work at converting random 3d models to series of g-code instructions. Feels like magic.
cies 3y ago
I really like to use Elm (yes the compiler and ecosystem around it). Good feedback when somethings goes bad, simple enough to learn in a weekend and allows me not to use JavaScript (which to my is a total kill-joy).
drewcoo 3y ago
cowsay always makes me smile.
torunar 3y ago
WinAmp and MPC-HC are still my go-to zero-bullshit solutions for playing video and music. Inkscape and Dia manage to amaze me even after 15 years of working with them. Ada (is programming language a software?) is my most recent discovery and I haven't experienced such pure joy of working with a programming language in, like, 10 years.
kadkadels 3y ago
I will be in the minority here but I really like Windows 10. Might be stockholm syndrome from work. What exactly you might ask, well, just ... how it looks, for example. Still modern. I like the search bar. Dicking around in the registry. It's weird antics, like Win32 file namespace API not allowing folder names to end with a space but the file system supporting it so you end up with some weird behaviour if some scanner manages to create a folder with a trailing space and then you end up with two folders, one with a space at the end and one without, and you can't delete the one with the space without looking up \\?\ Stockholm syndrome. (I also like Linux)
- kyriakos 3y ago
  I will admit I like windows 11. After replacing the start menu with startallback everything seems to just work and let me get work done.
okaleniuk 3y ago
I like writing HTML + vanilla JavaScript with zero dependencies in any simple text editor. Notepad++ on Windows, gedit or vim elsewhere.
- signaru 3y ago
  While Python may be an easy language, Javascript may be the easiest to get things running. It's just there before you even start downloading what other languages need. Just press F12 and REPL away. I use the JS console as a calculator on steroids among other things. It's nice that it has the C family syntax, which lets me interactively test expressions before using them on non-browser code, without the prerequisite of projects, files or other boilerplate.
huseyinkilic 3y ago
Total Commander, and Midnight Commander. We all do love exploring files, don't we?
- Y_Y 3y ago
  Honorable mention to ncdu
voxadam 3y ago
Dark Sky, both on my phone and on the desktop, prior to Apple's acquisition were always enjoyable to use. Transit.app was once quite simple and elegant, though, that's less true these days. Jellyfin may be a little rough around the edges but it works well with almost no intervention on my part. uBlock Origin, I can't even imagine the web without it.
- joshstrange 3y ago
  Carrot Weather [0] is probably the closest I’ve come to Dark Sky. I also used WeatherNerd till it shut down. [0] https://www.meetcarrot.com/weather/ https://www.meetcarrot.com/weather/
- blue_pants 3y ago
  My weather app of choice is Today Weather. Its UI strikes a good balance between being informative and clean looking (and it can be customized a bit too) https://todayweather.co/ https://todayweather.co/
freetime2 3y ago
Been a few years since I’ve used it (I’m back on MacBooks - the hardware is too nice), but Ubuntu has always felt great to me right out of the box. Of course the “Ubuntu” experience depends on the work of untold thousands of other developers - but they do a great job packaging it all together into a coherent and frustration-free experience IMO.
s4i 3y ago
Google Earth is often a nice balance between usefulness and delightfulness.
tietjens 3y ago
Feedbin sparks joy for me. Also Firefox's Pocket. Aboard is also a new web app I like a lot too. All reading based, or for collecting future reading.
joshstrange 3y ago
In no particular order: Prologue [0] - iOS Audiobook player, used Plex as a media source Overcast [1] - iOS Podcast player CleanShotX [2] - macOS screenshot/video/gif capture with annotation Drafts [3] - iOS/macOS note taking tool Paprika [4] - Cross platform recipe app YNAB [5] - "You Need A Budget" - web/mobile budgeting app 1Password [6] - Cross platform password manager Carrot Weather [7] - iOS weather app Color Slurp [8] - macOS color picker tool Phoenix [9] - macOS scriptable window manager Alfred [10] - macOS app launcher Bartender [11] - macOS menu bar organizer Coderunner [12] - macOS tool to run snippets of code in a number of supported languages. Great for testing something quickly DaisyDisk [13] - macOS disk space analyzer iTerm 2 [14] - Rock solid macOS terminal JetBrains IDEs [15] - Cross platform suite of IDEs Rocket [16] - macOS emoji quick substitution tool Transmit [17] - macOS SFTP/FTP/S3/etc tool VLC [18] - Cross platform video player CarbonCopyCloner [19] - macOS disk cloning/backup tool Pixelmator Pro [20] - macOS photo editor Preview [21] - Built-in macOS image/pdf viewer QuickLook [22] - Built-in macOS file preview tool [0] https://prologue.audio/ https://prologue.audio/ [1] https://overcast.fm/ https://overcast.fm/ [2] https://cleanshot.com/ https://cleanshot.com/ [3] https://getdrafts.com/ https://getdrafts.com/ [4] https://www.paprikaapp.com/ https://www.paprikaapp.com/ [5] https://www.youneedabudget.com/ https://www.youneedabudget.com/ [6] https://1password.com/ https://1password.com/ [7] https://www.meetcarrot.com/weather/ https://www.meetcarrot.com/weather/ [8] https://colorslurp.com/ https://colorslurp.com/ [9] https://github.com/kasper/phoenix https://github.com/kasper/phoenix [10] https://www.alfredapp.com/ https://www.alfredapp.com/ [11] https://www.macbartender.com/ https://www.macbartender.com/ [12] https://coderunnerapp.com/ https://coderunnerapp.com/ [13] https://daisydiskapp.com/ https://daisydiskapp.com/ [14] https://iterm2.com/ https://iterm2.com/ [15] https://www.jetbrains.com/ https://www.jetbrains.com/ [16] https://matthewpalmer.net/rocket/ https://matthewpalmer.net/rocket/ [17] https://panic.com/transmit/ https://panic.com/transmit/ [18] https://www.videolan.org/vlc/ https://www.videolan.org/vlc/ [19] https://bombich.com/ https://bombich.com/ [20] https://www.pixelmator.com/pro/ https://www.pixelmator.com/pro/ [21] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preview_(macOS) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preview_(macOS) [22] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quick_Look https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quick_Look
- supertron 3y ago
  Wow this is almost a list of everything on my machine. Great list. I second these recommendations!! Special mentions for: Alfred, Bartender, Daisy Disk and ColorSlurp
zelphirkalt 3y ago
Emacs org-mode
mmikeff 3y ago
I really like Things 3 on Mac and iPhone for recording and managing my Todos
mmikeff 3y ago
Having smart plugs that are controlled by voice is satisfying. "Hey Siri, turn the Christmas tree lights on"
supertron 3y ago
This might sound hyperbolic but as a .NET developer JetBrains Rider is a real joy to use IMHO. I think being paired with an M1 Mac is probably part of what makes the experience great for me. That IDE/hardware combo beats anything I've ever developed on in my career. By a long way. Shameless plug but I mention it and a few of my other favourite software tools here: https://supertron.dev/tools https://supertron.dev/tools The other "sparks joy" software I use regularly are Sketch - which after a lifetime of using Adobe products felt like a breath of fresh air when I switched to it - and Proxyman which is hands down the best HTTP interception/proxy software I've used on the Mac (and iOS).
IAmGraydon 3y ago
Ableton Live
sedatk 3y ago
Visual Studio Installer: The way how installer downloads and installs packages in parallel is a joy to watch. It makes me feel valued as a user. Great time savings. I know that's not unique to VS installer, but that's what I use it the most.
brettkromkamp 3y ago
Blender (https://www.blender.org/ https://www.blender.org/), by a wide margin, is my favourite piece of software. It's so apparent that the team behind it is passionate regarding what they are doing and highly skilled, as well. Each release brings both large and small improvements. What's more... it's open source.
TowerTall 3y ago
kais power goo
runiq 3y ago
You oughtta go touch grass, friend. Trust me
vmfunction 3y ago
Beautiful Dorena, but doesn't run on new mac os any more.
fotcorn 3y ago
Regolith Desktop (https://regolith-desktop.com/ https://regolith-desktop.com/). A fully preconfigured Tiling Window Manager based desktop environment for Linux. Uses i3 on X11, sway on Wayland. No more fiddling with config files to make basics like system settings actually work under i3.
alganet 3y ago
Desktop: VLC, Transmission (torrent client), Hydrogen (drum machine), DaVinci Resolve, VirtualBox, Inkscape, Encarta, Google Earth, curl, 7-Zip, Sticky Notes (macOS), World Clock (macOS). Web based: The Pirate Bay, Wikipedia, Nebula, phpBB, Internet Archive. Android: Google Maps, Musician (tuner & metronome app), Hacker's Keyboard. Probably left a lot of good ones out.
gryzzly 3y ago
IA Writer, workflowy
xtiansimon 3y ago
I like to draw, so— Adobe Illustrator was a joy for me back in the day. Fast. Today, if I need to make a drawing, I like google draw. That said, these days I’m making custom scripts in Python and I love Click for CLI. I love solving problems with scripting. Everything else is just a struggle to get something done and go home.
KronisLV 3y ago
Kanboard: https://kanboard.org/ https://kanboard.org/ is a lightweight Kanban project management tool, it might not have every feature under the sun but it's the most snappy project management tool I've ever used, looks simple and runs well. I honestly love it, what a nice thing to have. MobaXTerm: https://mobaxterm.mobatek.net/ https://mobaxterm.mobatek.net/ this one is a bit more Windows centric but I ended up paying for it and replaced mRemoteNg and PuTTY with it, it's even better than Remmina or whatever Linux has to offer - you can manage SSH/RDP/VNC/... sessions, input across multiple sessions side by side and it just simplifies things a lot (jump host support, a port forwarding too and so much more). GitKraken: https://www.gitkraken.com/ https://www.gitkraken.com/ also a piece of software that I paid for, this one actually makes using Git pleasant, feels better to use than SourceTree and Git Cola (even though that latter is wonderfully lightweight, too) and honestly I prefer that to the CLI nowadays. Most modern text editors and IDEs: I personally pay for JetBrains IDEs but also like Visual Studio Code as a text editor and both have helped me immensely, they're reasonably performant when you have the RAM, look nice, often give you suggestions about how to improve your code and also have a plethora of plugins in their ecosystems. Nowadays I unapologetically use LLMs as well and overall it feels like I have these great tools and cool autocomplete (that is sometimes a bit silly and wrong) at my disposal, that makes me happy. Kdenlive: https://kdenlive.org/ https://kdenlive.org/ imagine if there was a successor to Windows Movie Maker, though something that gets most of the important stuff out of Sony Vegas, except is also completely free and works on most platforms. Kdenlive is all of that and also somehow quite pleasant to use, I actually prefer it to DaVinci resolve. There is a bit of a learning curve to any piece of software like this, but everything mostly makes sense in this one. Linux Mint with Cinnamon: https://www.linuxmint.com/ https://www.linuxmint.com/ as far as desktop OSes go it's familiar (Ubuntu without snaps by default), whereas the UI feels both snappy, doesn't use too much resources and is actually pretty to look at. Gitea: https://about.gitea.com/ https://about.gitea.com/ I still use this for my personal Git repositories and integrating with CI systems and it's lightweight, looks good and just feels pleasant to use. Previously I self-hosted GitLab and constantly ran into resource exhaustion as well as doubts about the next update is going to corrupt all of my data and break (it did), so now I use Gitea instead. Drone CI: https://www.drone.io/ https://www.drone.io/ a container native CI solution that I can also self host. It's container oriented, integrates with Gitea nicely, is similarly nice to GitLab CI and doesn't cause me headaches like Jenkins would. Docker: https://www.docker.com/ https://www.docker.com/ yes, even Docker desktop. It just makes working with containers really pleasant and predictable, even when something like Podman also exists (and also is great). I don't know, I feel like Docker really saved me from having brittle legacy environments, even self-contained containers with health checks and resource limits with still the same brittle code inside of those make me feel way more safe.
lcordier 3y ago
i3, vim, Obsidian ;)
- lcordier 3y ago
  sxiv
rickydroll 3y ago
excalidraw (simple, flexible drawing tool) chatgpt copilot
anbardoi 3y ago
For iOS apps: Feeeed - completely customizable RSS reader with no data collection. Widgy - Custom widgets on iOS. Not talking like "mmmm widget green now" I'm talking custom javascript in the widget, API calls, custom symbols, colors, transparency, sizing, whatever you need. The complexity of photoshop almost. iSH: Alpine terminal emulator. Its surprising what you can do with it. For desktop: Tesseract: FOSS OCR(optical character recognition). Can convert text on images to actual encoded text. OpenRGB: FOSS interaction with a diverse set of RGB devices MultiMC: Minecraft Java edition custom launcher
iroddis 3y ago
Modern software? Not many. Excalidraw and Shottr (screenshots) are so easy and intuitive, I really appreciate them. Historically: BeOS, WebOS from Palm, and any BBS software ever. The joy of hearing people call in never faded, even as the world moved on.
10729287 3y ago
Remember the Milk. There’s something very satisfying adding tasks within only one line with its syntax. I also like how it never tries to impose it flows and how much it’s customisable to your needs. Very simple yet Powerfull. Last but not least, team never feel the need to add the new hip features or just change everything to justify subscription. One of the best app I ever used.
RudyStone 3y ago
Fish shell BBEdit SimCity 2000 Old issues of Wired (pre-9/11, let's say)
justusthane 3y ago
- Visidata - z (https://github.com/rupa/z https://github.com/rupa/z) - fzf - vim - Fastmail - WireGuard - draw.io - PowerShell (it’s difficult to overstate how much PS has improved Windows system administration) - Microsoft PowerToys - WSL (alternating joy and extreme frustration) - Home Assistant - Airfoil
whereistejas 3y ago
- social media -> are.na, posts.cv - arc - shots (camera app for ios)
locopati 3y ago
Todoist most of the time (there's the occasional moment of frustration when I'm trying to custom filter something complex and i wish they'd make multiple selection easier but those are both minor)
Charlie_e 3y ago
Obsidian is the first that comes to mind, offline-first but with vault sync is a wonderful experience. Other than that, Tableplus is far above other other database management gui Ive used, Zellij+Helix is a great combo, and I havent used it much I found Godot really intuitive and user friendly.
- snapplebobapple 3y ago
  I really liked obsidian but i switched to silverbullet a couple months ago and havent looled back, might be worth checking out.
sowbug 3y ago
Desktop Linux. It stays out of my way and just works. Apple has almost never been an option for me because I like being able to run software on diverse hardware. Windows gets more inscrutable and annoying every time I'm asked to do family tech support. I can't believe how many ads are baked into the current version of the OS. I'm not a gamer, so the lure to tolerate Windows for a single app has never been strong for me.
srhtftw 3y ago
Things that make my mac more usable for me in no particular order: visidata - https://www.visidata.org just - https://github.com/casey/just ripgrep - https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep macports - https://www.macports.org sloth - https://github.com/sveinbjornt/Sloth
karmakaze 3y ago
Ableton Live. It's amazing how good UI/UX can be for non-computer-field workflows. Maybe I appreciate it more because I wouldn't be able to organize it all so neat & compactly. And even better than that are hardware synthesizers with all the direct control knobs to fully and dynamically shape the sounds that come out. I also prefer them because looking at an Ableton screen feels too close to my day job. It's pretty much the same story as in cars: software with a touch screen can only get so good--with a physical UI it can be better.
schmookeeg 3y ago
Microsoft Publisher is mine. Think it, put it on the page, now you're a desktop publisher. I preferred it to Word for the longest time, for even the most banal documents, because I had pure control over layout. I wish it was ported to Mac.
ElectronBadger 3y ago
Bitwig, SublimeText, Tusky (Mastodon client for Android), Midnight Commander, my highly customized i3 setup.
gxonatano 3y ago
I'll play. My favorite software, in order: 1. Linux 2. Emacs (with org-mode, org-roam, and other plugins) 3. Nushell
khaledh 3y ago
JetBrains IDEs + iTerm2 + GitHub
snapplebobapple 3y ago
Hyprland for a tiling window manager, nixos sometimes but that one also sparks mass frustration just as much as joy
thiht 3y ago
I actually love Notion. I’ve used dozens note taking app and Notion is the only one I managed to stick with because of its flexibility and general aesthetic. Its block system is amazing.
zelphirkalt 3y ago
Git when it unexpectedly merges everything correctly automagically.
traches 3y ago
My sway, terminal, neovim setup is so goddamn /comfy/ I love it
kkfx 3y ago
Emacs, with EXWM for most of desktop usages (float windows support suck)
pschuegr 3y ago
https://www.reddit.com/r/outside/ https://www.reddit.com/r/outside/ in seriousness though this is a great question and i look forward to the answers. i could not think of one.
maybeben 3y ago
nothing from freedesktop.org
overengineer 3y ago
Micro text editor https://github.com/zyedidia/micro https://github.com/zyedidia/micro MS Paint

39 points by newswasboring 3y ago

I've spent my last few hours working with Jira-Align. I am beginning to hate computers at this point. To up lift my mood I'd like to use something which sparks joy. Does anyone have any suggestions?

sourcecodeplz 3y ago

Sublime text, Windows, Steam, VLC, OBS, Winamp, Chrome, 7-zip, Snipping Tool

anonymoushn 3y ago
What did you do to your Windows?

austin-cheney 3y ago

Open Media Vault, Photo Prism, VLC, WinAmp, Flashpoint, eXoDOS

hkt 3y ago
A lover of the old school. I'll never forget how much winamp kicks the llamas ass.
torunar 3y ago
+1 for WinAmp (version 2.9 specifically). Runs without issues on every single Windows OS I've been using through my life (98, XP, 7, 8, 10), supports obscure file formats through plugins, has everything that's needed for music player and no blot whatsoever.

hkt 3y ago

Cozy (audio books for Linux) youtube-tui (allows local management of YouTube saves and playlists, written in the frankly lovely ratatui framework) Iotas (nextcloud enabled notes software)

klez 3y ago

Nothing comes to my mind that is not a game, sorry.

lelanthran 3y ago

My default setup for writing C[1] literally puts me into a good mood when I start it up. Full-screen uxterm, with vim with 3 splits, LHS for a terminal. Multiple tabs when necessary, proper syntax highlighting (I use a monochrome/shades of grey color scheme), with Guake mapped to ctrl-~ and 9 workspaces arranged in a 3x3 grid.

gaws 3y ago
> proper syntax highlighting (I use a monochrome/shades of grey color scheme) Let's see it.
- lelanthran 3y ago
  >> proper syntax highlighting (I use a monochrome/shades of grey color scheme) > Let's see it. https://pasteboard.co/pfI4JQY7pBlr.png https://pasteboard.co/pfI4JQY7pBlr.png

blowski 3y ago

I really enjoy writing code, especially when learning something new, or feeling mastery over what I already know. JetBrains IDEs help with that a lot and I genuinely love it. Claude or ChatGPT let me bash out my frustrations. But, honestly, when I feel like that it's often best to get away from the computer entirely. Go for a walk, read a book, spend time with friends, do some old fashioned craft - whatever floats your boat.

freetime2 3y ago
JetBrains is definitely one of my favorite software companies.

anjork 3y ago

vim

sam_lowry_ 3y ago
Yup, especially vim mode pretty much everywhere. Dunno how people edit code without vim.

robertlagrant 3y ago

I'd suggest not software at all.

sourcecodeplz 3y ago
Yes, pen & paper ftw. Get some stamps and envelopes too, then start playing chess via correspondence.
- aloisdg 3y ago
  lichess.org would be my pick. Awesome software
- 0xEF 3y ago
  Might as well bring back play-by-post Dungeons & Dragons while we're at it. I know it's still going in a more modern capacity on myth-weavers.com and other sites, but I miss the mail version, chore that it was.

gryn 3y ago

Nit really spark joy but more if a relief from everything that seems to need a database is obsidian and the community plugins. Your database is your markdown files which mean I don't have to rely on it can edit the files from terminal when I want.

onion2k 3y ago

whimsical.com is a really nice diagram builder that just works. Everything is intuitive. I've built some reasonably complex diagrams in it without every needing to refer to a help page. It's great. I'll also give Excel a shout. It's brilliant. The learning curve is steep, but once you're there it's a joy to use.

eternityforest 3y ago
Excel was the peak of programming by end users. One of the only apps ever to create a model that gives users that much power to do things on their own. I rarely use it since I don't generally work with that kind of arbitrary data hands-on much, and I don't tend to use a lot of math outside of code, but whenever I do it's usually great

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zarzavat 3y ago

Not current by any means but the original TextMate. Beautiful in its simplicity and you felt like you were using the editor of the future, which you were because everybody uses TM grammars now.

arespredator 3y ago

HashiCorp Nomad

deleted 3y ago

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Y_Y 3y ago

Monty Python's Complete Waste of Time https://www.mobygames.com/game/1975/monty-pythons-complete-waste-of-time/ https://www.mobygames.com/game/1975/monty-pythons-complete-w...

uniqueuid 3y ago

What consistently amazes and pleases me is software that cleverly uses algorithms and data structures to prevent complexity. In particular, everything CRDT-like still seems like magic to me. So I'm unreasonably excited by bittorrent, storage based on consistent hashing, and rsync (rolling checksums are just amazing). Interestingly I hate distributed consensus with a passion because it always seems to achieve the opposite - causing more complexity.

blueappconfig 3y ago

Starting Blender and changing to Cycles render mode and seeing how the shadow falls over the items you place has always felt special to me.

Euphorbium 3y ago

Most adobe products.

achenet 3y ago

the Helix text editor. the fish shell. atuin. Linux with Sway window manager.

strogonoff 3y ago

Sourcehut, Superkey (if I don’t want to use the mouse then I don’t have to), Orion (browser), Zulip (Web, their mobile app can be frustrating).

abhinavk 3y ago

Is there something like /r/eyebleach for software where you can go at the end of day? That being said, the best would be no screen at all and some greenery.

vasco 3y ago
The hack for that is walking the dog after work.

rom16384 3y ago

Deluxe Paint, Turbo C, Krita

davikr 3y ago

I will never go back to using Windows Explorer & Taskbar after downloading Altap Salamander and StartAllBack. Also, "Everything" for searching.

justusthane 3y ago
Everything is so great. In addition to my local drive at work I also have it set up to index a huge network drive, and I can actually find things.

hilux 3y ago

I remember first using Expensify after years of wrangling various ERP monstrosities. Serious joy.

mmikeff 3y ago
In a similar vein, I had a Pleo payment card at a previous job, and the speed with which it notified me on my phone when I had paid on the card, prompting me to take a picture of the receipt, always made me smile. More often than not the notification came through before the receipt had even printed.

andrewstuart 3y ago

ChatGPT.

freetime2 3y ago
ChatGPT is amazing. Even when it is completely hallucinating, the fact that it can do so with such a nicely worded response just puts a smile on my face.

eternityforest 3y ago

Poetry, Pipx, VSCode, pre-commit, ruff, MyPy, Make(When used for non-C related stuff). Recent GIMP versions, Realthunder's fork of FreeCad, PrusaSlicer, neofetch, Ardour, SculptGL, Vorta/Borg, Git Cola

cynicalsecurity 3y ago
What do you like about VSCode?
- eternityforest 3y ago
  It's incredibly feature rich and doesn't require a ton of time investment to set up. The command pallet lets you have quick access to things you don't use that often that I'd otherwise forget in the months between uses. It handles pretty much everything about development. I can have my terminal in the bottom, any problems detected in the current file on the right. It's a perfectly good Git merging tool too. The debugger is very easy to use, and it's got a ton of extensions that are easy to manage. It's even got settings sync in the cloud to keep track of it.
freetime2 3y ago
Never tried PrusaSlicer (only ever used Cura), but every time I go to 3d print something I am just astounded at how well slicers work at converting random 3d models to series of g-code instructions. Feels like magic.

cies 3y ago

I really like to use Elm (yes the compiler and ecosystem around it). Good feedback when somethings goes bad, simple enough to learn in a weekend and allows me not to use JavaScript (which to my is a total kill-joy).

drewcoo 3y ago

cowsay always makes me smile.

torunar 3y ago

WinAmp and MPC-HC are still my go-to zero-bullshit solutions for playing video and music. Inkscape and Dia manage to amaze me even after 15 years of working with them. Ada (is programming language a software?) is my most recent discovery and I haven't experienced such pure joy of working with a programming language in, like, 10 years.

kadkadels 3y ago

I will be in the minority here but I really like Windows 10. Might be stockholm syndrome from work. What exactly you might ask, well, just ... how it looks, for example. Still modern. I like the search bar. Dicking around in the registry. It's weird antics, like Win32 file namespace API not allowing folder names to end with a space but the file system supporting it so you end up with some weird behaviour if some scanner manages to create a folder with a trailing space and then you end up with two folders, one with a space at the end and one without, and you can't delete the one with the space without looking up \\?\ Stockholm syndrome. (I also like Linux)

kyriakos 3y ago
I will admit I like windows 11. After replacing the start menu with startallback everything seems to just work and let me get work done.

okaleniuk 3y ago

I like writing HTML + vanilla JavaScript with zero dependencies in any simple text editor. Notepad++ on Windows, gedit or vim elsewhere.

signaru 3y ago
While Python may be an easy language, Javascript may be the easiest to get things running. It's just there before you even start downloading what other languages need. Just press F12 and REPL away. I use the JS console as a calculator on steroids among other things. It's nice that it has the C family syntax, which lets me interactively test expressions before using them on non-browser code, without the prerequisite of projects, files or other boilerplate.

huseyinkilic 3y ago

Total Commander, and Midnight Commander. We all do love exploring files, don't we?

Y_Y 3y ago
Honorable mention to ncdu

voxadam 3y ago

Dark Sky, both on my phone and on the desktop, prior to Apple's acquisition were always enjoyable to use. Transit.app was once quite simple and elegant, though, that's less true these days. Jellyfin may be a little rough around the edges but it works well with almost no intervention on my part. uBlock Origin, I can't even imagine the web without it.

joshstrange 3y ago
Carrot Weather [0] is probably the closest I’ve come to Dark Sky. I also used WeatherNerd till it shut down. [0] https://www.meetcarrot.com/weather/ https://www.meetcarrot.com/weather/
blue_pants 3y ago
My weather app of choice is Today Weather. Its UI strikes a good balance between being informative and clean looking (and it can be customized a bit too) https://todayweather.co/ https://todayweather.co/

freetime2 3y ago

Been a few years since I’ve used it (I’m back on MacBooks - the hardware is too nice), but Ubuntu has always felt great to me right out of the box. Of course the “Ubuntu” experience depends on the work of untold thousands of other developers - but they do a great job packaging it all together into a coherent and frustration-free experience IMO.

s4i 3y ago

Google Earth is often a nice balance between usefulness and delightfulness.

tietjens 3y ago

Feedbin sparks joy for me. Also Firefox's Pocket. Aboard is also a new web app I like a lot too. All reading based, or for collecting future reading.

joshstrange 3y ago

In no particular order: Prologue [0] - iOS Audiobook player, used Plex as a media source Overcast [1] - iOS Podcast player CleanShotX [2] - macOS screenshot/video/gif capture with annotation Drafts [3] - iOS/macOS note taking tool Paprika [4] - Cross platform recipe app YNAB [5] - "You Need A Budget" - web/mobile budgeting app 1Password [6] - Cross platform password manager Carrot Weather [7] - iOS weather app Color Slurp [8] - macOS color picker tool Phoenix [9] - macOS scriptable window manager Alfred [10] - macOS app launcher Bartender [11] - macOS menu bar organizer Coderunner [12] - macOS tool to run snippets of code in a number of supported languages. Great for testing something quickly DaisyDisk [13] - macOS disk space analyzer iTerm 2 [14] - Rock solid macOS terminal JetBrains IDEs [15] - Cross platform suite of IDEs Rocket [16] - macOS emoji quick substitution tool Transmit [17] - macOS SFTP/FTP/S3/etc tool VLC [18] - Cross platform video player CarbonCopyCloner [19] - macOS disk cloning/backup tool Pixelmator Pro [20] - macOS photo editor Preview [21] - Built-in macOS image/pdf viewer QuickLook [22] - Built-in macOS file preview tool [0] https://prologue.audio/ https://prologue.audio/ [1] https://overcast.fm/ https://overcast.fm/ [2] https://cleanshot.com/ https://cleanshot.com/ [3] https://getdrafts.com/ https://getdrafts.com/ [4] https://www.paprikaapp.com/ https://www.paprikaapp.com/ [5] https://www.youneedabudget.com/ https://www.youneedabudget.com/ [6] https://1password.com/ https://1password.com/ [7] https://www.meetcarrot.com/weather/ https://www.meetcarrot.com/weather/ [8] https://colorslurp.com/ https://colorslurp.com/ [9] https://github.com/kasper/phoenix https://github.com/kasper/phoenix [10] https://www.alfredapp.com/ https://www.alfredapp.com/ [11] https://www.macbartender.com/ https://www.macbartender.com/ [12] https://coderunnerapp.com/ https://coderunnerapp.com/ [13] https://daisydiskapp.com/ https://daisydiskapp.com/ [14] https://iterm2.com/ https://iterm2.com/ [15] https://www.jetbrains.com/ https://www.jetbrains.com/ [16] https://matthewpalmer.net/rocket/ https://matthewpalmer.net/rocket/ [17] https://panic.com/transmit/ https://panic.com/transmit/ [18] https://www.videolan.org/vlc/ https://www.videolan.org/vlc/ [19] https://bombich.com/ https://bombich.com/ [20] https://www.pixelmator.com/pro/ https://www.pixelmator.com/pro/ [21] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preview_(macOS) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preview_(macOS) [22] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quick_Look https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quick_Look

supertron 3y ago
Wow this is almost a list of everything on my machine. Great list. I second these recommendations!! Special mentions for: Alfred, Bartender, Daisy Disk and ColorSlurp

zelphirkalt 3y ago

Emacs org-mode

mmikeff 3y ago

I really like Things 3 on Mac and iPhone for recording and managing my Todos

mmikeff 3y ago

Having smart plugs that are controlled by voice is satisfying. "Hey Siri, turn the Christmas tree lights on"

supertron 3y ago

This might sound hyperbolic but as a .NET developer JetBrains Rider is a real joy to use IMHO. I think being paired with an M1 Mac is probably part of what makes the experience great for me. That IDE/hardware combo beats anything I've ever developed on in my career. By a long way. Shameless plug but I mention it and a few of my other favourite software tools here: https://supertron.dev/tools https://supertron.dev/tools The other "sparks joy" software I use regularly are Sketch - which after a lifetime of using Adobe products felt like a breath of fresh air when I switched to it - and Proxyman which is hands down the best HTTP interception/proxy software I've used on the Mac (and iOS).

IAmGraydon 3y ago

Ableton Live

sedatk 3y ago

Visual Studio Installer: The way how installer downloads and installs packages in parallel is a joy to watch. It makes me feel valued as a user. Great time savings. I know that's not unique to VS installer, but that's what I use it the most.

brettkromkamp 3y ago

Blender (https://www.blender.org/ https://www.blender.org/), by a wide margin, is my favourite piece of software. It's so apparent that the team behind it is passionate regarding what they are doing and highly skilled, as well. Each release brings both large and small improvements. What's more... it's open source.

TowerTall 3y ago

kais power goo

runiq 3y ago

You oughtta go touch grass, friend. Trust me

vmfunction 3y ago

Beautiful Dorena, but doesn't run on new mac os any more.

fotcorn 3y ago

Regolith Desktop (https://regolith-desktop.com/ https://regolith-desktop.com/). A fully preconfigured Tiling Window Manager based desktop environment for Linux. Uses i3 on X11, sway on Wayland. No more fiddling with config files to make basics like system settings actually work under i3.

alganet 3y ago

Desktop: VLC, Transmission (torrent client), Hydrogen (drum machine), DaVinci Resolve, VirtualBox, Inkscape, Encarta, Google Earth, curl, 7-Zip, Sticky Notes (macOS), World Clock (macOS). Web based: The Pirate Bay, Wikipedia, Nebula, phpBB, Internet Archive. Android: Google Maps, Musician (tuner & metronome app), Hacker's Keyboard. Probably left a lot of good ones out.

gryzzly 3y ago

IA Writer, workflowy

xtiansimon 3y ago

I like to draw, so— Adobe Illustrator was a joy for me back in the day. Fast. Today, if I need to make a drawing, I like google draw. That said, these days I’m making custom scripts in Python and I love Click for CLI. I love solving problems with scripting. Everything else is just a struggle to get something done and go home.

KronisLV 3y ago

Kanboard: https://kanboard.org/ https://kanboard.org/ is a lightweight Kanban project management tool, it might not have every feature under the sun but it's the most snappy project management tool I've ever used, looks simple and runs well. I honestly love it, what a nice thing to have. MobaXTerm: https://mobaxterm.mobatek.net/ https://mobaxterm.mobatek.net/ this one is a bit more Windows centric but I ended up paying for it and replaced mRemoteNg and PuTTY with it, it's even better than Remmina or whatever Linux has to offer - you can manage SSH/RDP/VNC/... sessions, input across multiple sessions side by side and it just simplifies things a lot (jump host support, a port forwarding too and so much more). GitKraken: https://www.gitkraken.com/ https://www.gitkraken.com/ also a piece of software that I paid for, this one actually makes using Git pleasant, feels better to use than SourceTree and Git Cola (even though that latter is wonderfully lightweight, too) and honestly I prefer that to the CLI nowadays. Most modern text editors and IDEs: I personally pay for JetBrains IDEs but also like Visual Studio Code as a text editor and both have helped me immensely, they're reasonably performant when you have the RAM, look nice, often give you suggestions about how to improve your code and also have a plethora of plugins in their ecosystems. Nowadays I unapologetically use LLMs as well and overall it feels like I have these great tools and cool autocomplete (that is sometimes a bit silly and wrong) at my disposal, that makes me happy. Kdenlive: https://kdenlive.org/ https://kdenlive.org/ imagine if there was a successor to Windows Movie Maker, though something that gets most of the important stuff out of Sony Vegas, except is also completely free and works on most platforms. Kdenlive is all of that and also somehow quite pleasant to use, I actually prefer it to DaVinci resolve. There is a bit of a learning curve to any piece of software like this, but everything mostly makes sense in this one. Linux Mint with Cinnamon: https://www.linuxmint.com/ https://www.linuxmint.com/ as far as desktop OSes go it's familiar (Ubuntu without snaps by default), whereas the UI feels both snappy, doesn't use too much resources and is actually pretty to look at. Gitea: https://about.gitea.com/ https://about.gitea.com/ I still use this for my personal Git repositories and integrating with CI systems and it's lightweight, looks good and just feels pleasant to use. Previously I self-hosted GitLab and constantly ran into resource exhaustion as well as doubts about the next update is going to corrupt all of my data and break (it did), so now I use Gitea instead. Drone CI: https://www.drone.io/ https://www.drone.io/ a container native CI solution that I can also self host. It's container oriented, integrates with Gitea nicely, is similarly nice to GitLab CI and doesn't cause me headaches like Jenkins would. Docker: https://www.docker.com/ https://www.docker.com/ yes, even Docker desktop. It just makes working with containers really pleasant and predictable, even when something like Podman also exists (and also is great). I don't know, I feel like Docker really saved me from having brittle legacy environments, even self-contained containers with health checks and resource limits with still the same brittle code inside of those make me feel way more safe.

lcordier 3y ago

i3, vim, Obsidian ;)

lcordier 3y ago
sxiv

rickydroll 3y ago

excalidraw (simple, flexible drawing tool) chatgpt copilot

anbardoi 3y ago

For iOS apps: Feeeed - completely customizable RSS reader with no data collection. Widgy - Custom widgets on iOS. Not talking like "mmmm widget green now" I'm talking custom javascript in the widget, API calls, custom symbols, colors, transparency, sizing, whatever you need. The complexity of photoshop almost. iSH: Alpine terminal emulator. Its surprising what you can do with it. For desktop: Tesseract: FOSS OCR(optical character recognition). Can convert text on images to actual encoded text. OpenRGB: FOSS interaction with a diverse set of RGB devices MultiMC: Minecraft Java edition custom launcher

iroddis 3y ago

Modern software? Not many. Excalidraw and Shottr (screenshots) are so easy and intuitive, I really appreciate them. Historically: BeOS, WebOS from Palm, and any BBS software ever. The joy of hearing people call in never faded, even as the world moved on.

10729287 3y ago

Remember the Milk. There’s something very satisfying adding tasks within only one line with its syntax. I also like how it never tries to impose it flows and how much it’s customisable to your needs. Very simple yet Powerfull. Last but not least, team never feel the need to add the new hip features or just change everything to justify subscription. One of the best app I ever used.

RudyStone 3y ago

Fish shell BBEdit SimCity 2000 Old issues of Wired (pre-9/11, let's say)

justusthane 3y ago

- Visidata - z (https://github.com/rupa/z https://github.com/rupa/z) - fzf - vim - Fastmail - WireGuard - draw.io - PowerShell (it’s difficult to overstate how much PS has improved Windows system administration) - Microsoft PowerToys - WSL (alternating joy and extreme frustration) - Home Assistant - Airfoil

whereistejas 3y ago

- social media -> are.na, posts.cv - arc - shots (camera app for ios)

locopati 3y ago

Todoist most of the time (there's the occasional moment of frustration when I'm trying to custom filter something complex and i wish they'd make multiple selection easier but those are both minor)

Charlie_e 3y ago

Obsidian is the first that comes to mind, offline-first but with vault sync is a wonderful experience. Other than that, Tableplus is far above other other database management gui Ive used, Zellij+Helix is a great combo, and I havent used it much I found Godot really intuitive and user friendly.

snapplebobapple 3y ago
I really liked obsidian but i switched to silverbullet a couple months ago and havent looled back, might be worth checking out.

sowbug 3y ago

Desktop Linux. It stays out of my way and just works. Apple has almost never been an option for me because I like being able to run software on diverse hardware. Windows gets more inscrutable and annoying every time I'm asked to do family tech support. I can't believe how many ads are baked into the current version of the OS. I'm not a gamer, so the lure to tolerate Windows for a single app has never been strong for me.

srhtftw 3y ago

Things that make my mac more usable for me in no particular order: visidata - https://www.visidata.org just - https://github.com/casey/just ripgrep - https://github.com/BurntSushi/ripgrep macports - https://www.macports.org sloth - https://github.com/sveinbjornt/Sloth

karmakaze 3y ago

Ableton Live. It's amazing how good UI/UX can be for non-computer-field workflows. Maybe I appreciate it more because I wouldn't be able to organize it all so neat & compactly. And even better than that are hardware synthesizers with all the direct control knobs to fully and dynamically shape the sounds that come out. I also prefer them because looking at an Ableton screen feels too close to my day job. It's pretty much the same story as in cars: software with a touch screen can only get so good--with a physical UI it can be better.

schmookeeg 3y ago

Microsoft Publisher is mine. Think it, put it on the page, now you're a desktop publisher. I preferred it to Word for the longest time, for even the most banal documents, because I had pure control over layout. I wish it was ported to Mac.

ElectronBadger 3y ago

Bitwig, SublimeText, Tusky (Mastodon client for Android), Midnight Commander, my highly customized i3 setup.

gxonatano 3y ago

I'll play. My favorite software, in order: 1. Linux 2. Emacs (with org-mode, org-roam, and other plugins) 3. Nushell

khaledh 3y ago

JetBrains IDEs + iTerm2 + GitHub

snapplebobapple 3y ago

Hyprland for a tiling window manager, nixos sometimes but that one also sparks mass frustration just as much as joy

thiht 3y ago

I actually love Notion. I’ve used dozens note taking app and Notion is the only one I managed to stick with because of its flexibility and general aesthetic. Its block system is amazing.

zelphirkalt 3y ago

Git when it unexpectedly merges everything correctly automagically.

traches 3y ago

My sway, terminal, neovim setup is so goddamn /comfy/ I love it

kkfx 3y ago

Emacs, with EXWM for most of desktop usages (float windows support suck)

pschuegr 3y ago

https://www.reddit.com/r/outside/ https://www.reddit.com/r/outside/ in seriousness though this is a great question and i look forward to the answers. i could not think of one.

maybeben 3y ago

nothing from freedesktop.org

overengineer 3y ago

Micro text editor https://github.com/zyedidia/micro https://github.com/zyedidia/micro MS Paint