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Ben Halpern
Ben Halpern

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What’s the most under-appreciated software?

What code floating around doesn’t get the credit it deserves?

Oldest comments (117)

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Ben Myers

Scroll Reverser, because macOS doesn't let you divorce the trackpad scrolling direction from the mouse scrolling direction.

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Kirill Shestakov

Wish I knew about this one when I was using Mac

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Daniel Schulz

Nextcloud, for providing a self hosted, open source and federalized alternative to Apples and Google's cloud consumer products.

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Dublin Anondson • Edited

RunCat, the cutest way to check CPU usage on mac.

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unbrand

Perf perf.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Tut... This thing is awesome. If you're having trouble isolating performance issues or want a quick and dirty view into what's going on RIGHT NOW on the cpu, perf is your jam.

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Maximilian Burszley

software

I'd vote Factorio. Praised by its fanbase, I don't see much talk about it elsewhere. They do really impressive dev updates talking about the challenges they face with the game.

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Katie Nelson

For me, I've been doing a lot of Web API work lately, so Postman has been invaluable in testing my code. It lets you build client-side requests in many formats and keeps track of them all for later use.

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Ben Lovy
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Katie Nelson

Awesome!
Never heard of it, but I just went there and it looks great.
I love the name too. 😊
Thanks Ben, I learn something new everyday!

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Aadi Bajpai

Not sure why I'd use that over Postman though 🤔

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I'm Luis! \^-^/

I think the advantage is that is web-based, unlike Postman which you have to install.
I've tried to use it but it can't really replace Postman, but maybe they'll eventually make it good enough. It's open source.

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aadibajpai profile image
Aadi Bajpai

I see, I tried it and I definitely prefer Postman over it. Open source is a plus, but not more than function :)

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Tore Pettersen

Postman used to be my go to rest client, but after a friend of me suggested Insomnia I don't see myself going back.

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Katie Nelson

Wow, a cure for my sleepless nights 😊
Thanks Tore! That's another one I never knew about.
Everyone is so helpful here on DEV.

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joon • Edited

Thank you for the recommendation, looks amazing - will try as soon as I get to work

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daletman

What does Insomnia better than Postman?

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Tore Pettersen

I find Insomnia to be easier to use. I needed to read the docs once and after that everting just made sense for me.
With Postman I more frequently had to google my way through the bit more advanced features.

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Elliot Derhay

Definitely love insomnia. Use it pretty frequently.

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Danny Seymour

Same. I find Insomnia a lot faster and easier to work with pretty much haven't touched postman since I switched over to it.

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Adithya Sreyaj

After I discovered REST Client for VSCode I stopped visiting Postman often.

I don't have to switch tabs anynore...😊🤩

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Ben Halpern

Everyone has different interpretations of this question, which is fun.

I'd answer this question with...

SQLite

It is installed in practically every computer, phone, etc. on earth.

git

We take for granted how epic a technology git is. It takes on some incredibly difficult problems with grace. Even if its interface is confusing or dangerous at times, its underlying mechanics are so much more sound than most software.

curl

Another one of these ever-present pieces of software that just runs on so many machines and has been getting updates and new features for decades.

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Fulton Browne

I completely agree with all those, especially sqlite, its built in to android and is super easy to use and just WORKS.

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Maximilian Burszley

Sqlite isn't really "built" into anything as there's no DBMS to speak of. Every programming language simply contains modules to interact with its files almost as a rite of passage.

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Aadi Bajpai • Edited

I don't think git is underappreciated at all. I mean, Git{Hub, Lab}. Everyone uses it.

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Ben Halpern

That's true, but I still think the shear excellence of it gets taken for granted by the average developer. The fact that we can build software in a distributed manner using this tool is freaking magical.

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Jesse Phillips

And github, gitlab get more of the credit. (gethub should definitely get credit to changing the way software is developed through.)

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miku86

I'd say that nobody outside of professional development uses it.

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Paweł Świątkowski

Yes, everyone uses it. And everyone uses probably about 10% of its capabilities, while thinking it's all it does (push, pull, merge, commit, maybe rebase).

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bretthancox

Git is 100% underappreciated. Everyone should have to deal with one of the older, commercial solutions to appreciate it. Working with Subversion and Rational ClearCase definitely set me up to love git.

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Daragh Byrne

Team foundation server, perforce, RCS... I still shudder.

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Mike Healy

I'm often in awe of Git. I never had to use Subversion or its predecessors but I still often give silent thanks to Git

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Paresh

+1 for SQLite, I wasn't aware about it until I used it in my recent assignment. It is very powerful storage component (remember, I am not saying database server). I'd definitely consider it as a replacement of storing data in files.

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Thyag Sundararmoorthy

+1 for SQLite. I was doing a diff between couple files(several GBs). The Unix tools based on estimate would have taken 3-4 hrs. I loaded them into SQLite, used the MINUS operation and the job was done in 5 mins. Remarkable piece of software for crunching locally stored data.

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drew

Maybe its dumb, but I started using github to log any code I write from scratch, even just method challenges in Java(I'm still learning). Mainly as a way to keep up activity on my account, and also I can look back if I'm unsure how to do something. I also have my personal site hosted on Pages. Nice to have free hosting. I just pay for a custom domain.

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NaveenKumar Namachivayam ⚡

🔢 Calculator - everyone uses it, but don't bother at all.

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Pierre Faniel • Edited

Flycut, a very handy clipboard manager for Mac OS, has made copy pasting much more handy. It allows you to scroll back to the previously copied values (the amount of values kept in memory is configurable).

Sadly I haven't found an equivalent that does the same for Linux nor Windows forcing me to work with Mac OS 🙈

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Tim JK Strickland • Edited

I use Clipy (another clipboard manager) something like every 15 seconds. Sadly, it's only MacOS too.

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ShepherdNg

Ditto does similar stuff on Windows

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Michel Renaud

I use Alfred on macOS, which includes a clipboard manager that does that and Alfred also does a lot more. I severely underuse that software.

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Patryk

I use KDE Plasma, and it has a built-in clipboard manager.

I've used Gnome 2 and 3, Cinnamon, Openbox, LXDM, and probably others, and plasma 5 is seriously the most fantastic DE I have seen. If you haven't used it and would want to go back to Linux, do give it a try!

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edouard-mangel

I Use Ditto on Windows, really handy!

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Cosmas Gikunju

Netlify - Just how easy it is to deploy your frontend apps with netlify for free.
git - Git is an extremely powerful utility that I'd clearly not live without.
StackOverflow - Just saved me right now after hours pulling my hair.

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Ted Goas

I'm a huge fan of Netlify's branch previews too :) Makes it so easy to show folks unfinished / unmerged work without them having to pull down and build a whole repo.

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Omar Gaston Chalas

Netlify is really amazing and easy to use.

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Suborna

None of these are underappreciated though! Most of the programmers uses them on a day to day basis all the times..

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Cosmas Gikunju • Edited

what I mean is we really use this tools and software as a norm for free and don't really think about what goes on under the hood.

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DavidZ

Netlify one is true. I have used netlify a lot in that regard

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Tim Downey • Edited

Probably something like openssl. It is responsible for so much of the security provided by TLS that we take for granted on the web and is maintained by just a few people.

It is used by over two thirds of websites and a single vulnerability in it cause cause widespread damage.

There's a lot of other critical infrastructure software that falls in this category too.

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Maximilian Burszley

Not sure how much "appreciation" openssl deserves these days. I think the general rule is you don't implement security yourself and everyone has taken that to an extreme with the particular tool.

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Michiel Hendriks

OpenSSL was run by mainly 2 people, and only 1 could almost be fully employed. Where was big tech to support these people?

Sure, there have been a bunch of major bugs in it. Just like other SSL/TLS libraries.

So yes, OpenSSL is underappreciated.

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Kostia Palchyk

Linux

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Jonathan Boudreau

Considering most people don't know Android is based off of it, I'd have to agree.

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Thomas H Jones II

Encryption libraries.

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Ian Pride

Going to get some FLAK here, but... AutoHotkey...

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Christopher C. Johnson

Love AutoHotkey

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Antonio Djigo

I'd say that Rails is the most under-appreciated framework @ backend... little gems need love too :(

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