Ask HN: Which boring technology do you still use?

[importgravity]

This question is inspired by the Choose Boring Technology post that is posted here often. My question here is which boring technology do you still use?

The most interesting answers would be those where the majority of tech workers today would most likely choose a new shiny technology but you still use a boring technology for it. Please do provide some context for your answers. Why did you choose the boring technology? What problems do you solve with it? Why didn't you switch to another popular alternative for it?

[bilekas]

Vim.. I do like VSCode to be fair but I find after so many years nothing has been able to compete for me. I'm not particularly stubborn either with trying new things, but the learning curve versus the reward just don't trump Vim still..

Edit - Midnight Commander - Although i did upgrade to the SpeedCommander.

[dvfjsdhgfv]

> Edit - Midnight Commander - Although i did upgrade to the SpeedCommander.

AFAIR MC is for Unices only, whereas SC is for Windows. Out of curiosity: why did you decide to use a commercial product when open alternatives are available, such as FAR?

[bilekas]

Well I went from MC in the old days that was what I got used to and so when moving to Windows enviornments I found TotalCommander - But after a few years it was a little bit annoying having to extend it myself for things like sftp support, while looking for a better solution I came across SpeedCommander and haven't looked since..

FAR is new to me though - I'll check it out though ! Thanks, might be my new favorite after all !

[JeanMarcS]

If it was on DOS, may be you are referencing to Norton Commander ?

[bilekas]

Nah, this was on my centos days, my old man was working with them so I used to always be playing with linux distros, used to get the odd linux magazines that would come with a fedora release and the odd redHat IIRC. They would have a whole section on how to install them too.. Slackware was something of a challenge for me as a kid..

If I'm not mistaken though NC was the predecessor of MC!

[ProllyInfamous]

I still use a typewriter for daily correspondence (both personal and business). This reduces the procrastination of editing and allows for more meaningful, personal, and distraction-free writings.

Using a modern word processor definitely allows for better revision / saving / duplication, but most writings shouldn't require so much thought / preparation. Not having a display to distract while thinking definitely allows the author to focus.

[culturestate]

> This reduces the procrastination of editing and allows for more meaningful, personal, and distraction-free writings.

I experience a similar kind of perfectionist-anxiety-induced procrastination when I write, and it’s always bothered me that none of the “distraction-free” writing apps (I use Ulysses) that come with typewriter modes[1] don’t have an option to disable backspace or even re-map it to strikethrough.

1. https://ghost-staging.ulysses.app/typewriter-mode/

[muzani]

The original mechanical keyboard.

I'd actually enjoy having a typewriter and being locked somewhere far and not have to think about build times. I remember an interview with a hacker who wrote code on paper while he was in jail, said it was extremely productive for him. A lot of modern writers also use typewriters so they can focus better without internet access.

[fattybob]

Paper and pencil / pen I industry (energy) my reports are written in text of various forms and emailed, but almost always printed and read from what I see, you can scribble on a printout - yes you can on many electronic media, but it’s just not as easy!

[dvfjsdhgfv]

All of them!

* C, because it is so easy to implement anything you can imagine, there are libraries for everything, and the resulting code runs very fast (although I deliberately limit myself to safe constructs only).

* C++, because many things are so much easier (and often safer) to do in C++ than in C, and again you have libraries for everything, and the code runs fast. Modern C++ is quite nice. And you don't have to know all of C++ to write reasonably efficient code.

* Python, because there is nothing faster when you need to prepare a prototype, and sometimes the prototype is good enough, especially in io-bound code.

* PHP, because you can quickly code practically any web solution extremely quickly (and integrate with any JS framework you like), and the deployment is a breeze. Again, modern PHP has very little in common with the old language you may remember from 2000.

* Bash and traditional Unix tools as they allow me to do my job in no time. I took time to learn what each one is for and it just saves time. Yes, I could use Python to grab the first fields from a CSV file but normally I'll do it faster with AWK etc.

That said, I love experimenting with new languages like Nim, they are a breath of fresh air and quite fun to tinker with. Nevertheless, in my day to day work, I find myself using proven tools most often.

[wruza]

Pen and paper to track my design and progress. I find it easier to “navigate” because paper allows me to draw connections, layout and diagrams in a way that is hard to do in software. It is also easier to access, because it’s like an additional display with your project always “open”. Sometimes I archive info from paper into a computer file, when most tasks are over but there are few notes that must be addressed later. I also archive important paper into physical files.

I tried many apps ought to replace pen and paper, but it never clicked.

[the_third_wave]

A wood-fired stove, wood-fired cooking stove, a few different types of axes and a crosscut saw to provide the former with fuel from dead trees.

Oh, wait? Those are not 'boring technologies', they're just 'old technologies' - nothing boring about them.

Computer-related 'boring' technologies in daily use: the nix tool set - shell, awk, sed, perl, curl and the like plus some relatively newcomers like jq and xidel to handle web-related things. Vim in one of its guises. Instead of fighting npm and the myriad of ever-changing related tools to provide CLI tools I tend to use the former to open up APIs to those who live on the command line. All the claims of shell being unsuitable for such projects notwithstanding these tools tend to work reliably while being self-contained - a single file pulling in a single config file and sometimes a common functions file. No transpilers needed, no packers, no shitload of libraries, no nuthin' - just a few hundred lines of 'boring' shell like e.g. this BookStack* API CLI [1] I made a week and a bit ago.

Storage: MDADM and LVM hosting ext4 instead of ZFS because I like the separation of tasks and the greater flexibility over the latter.

Web: PHP because it works and performs well enough. Java when needed, also because it works and performs well enough. Pure Javascript instead of the jumble of libraries/frameworks/new-ways-of-doing-things because those all too often end up being old-unmaintained-ways-of-doing-things.

System: C over C++/Rust/Zig over Go/Nim/Crystal because it is the Lingua Franca which has stood the test of time and will probably outlive most of those mentioned languages.

Communications: SMTP/IMAP + XMPP and when needed Telegram over Slack/Teams/whatever.

Cloud? Only when I have the hardware under my own control and within reach. The server lives under the stairs, the backup server under some other stairs in another building.

Wired Ethernet over WiFi when possible.

Older hardware, usually rescued from a dumpster or something similar.

[1] https://github.com/Yetangitu/bs

[selfhoster11]

CLI over browser apps. There is simply less latency than doing anything using browser tech, and sometimes less clicking than with GUI apps.

The ext4 filesystem. Yes, there is no bitrot protection and no snapshots etc, but it's rock-solid as a main OS partition.

[Aardwolf]

Do you happen to know if there's a linux filesystem that has bitrot protection, but doesn't need snapshots?

- ZFS is not in the Linux kernel so I don't want to use it for a daily work machine

- btrfs works fine but its tools to undelete/recover files when something did go wrong are pretty bad

- XFS looks ancient, not sure how good it is

- ext4 is also pretty aged by now, but is what I use now after my attempt at btrfs. It doesn't have any bitrot protection though

Is there anything else viable today? The above are basically the same choices as I also had 10 years ago

[selfhoster11]

I would use PAR2 for this. It's not the most integrated approach to dealing with bitrot like ZFS, but it feels much more composable - very Unix-like in a sense. PAR2 has one job (protect against bitrot with sidecar parity files) and does it well, and so does ext4 (store files without losing everything).

I certainly wouldn't use btrfs. It ate my data at one point, and misbehaves without any provocation. I don't trust it, and am quite vocal about that whenever it's mentioned.

[accountofme]

Zfs will never make it into mainline unless someone rewrites it from a blackbox specification.

The zfs license is incompatible with gpl.

That being said zfs is awesome, it is simple to use, about as bulletproof you can get.

[rakoo]

RSS

IMAP

Bittorrent

I lost my mojo for brand new technologies and frameworks and languages, and I can't ignore the amount of energy and resources that new shiny tech requires, so I stick to low-tech, proven stuff that has been there for eons and will be there for eons, as much as I can.

[bilekas]

RSS & IMAP I can maybe understand are a bit 'boring' and stale but is bittorrent/p2p ?

I always see some really clever usages still popping up!

[rakoo]

The base bittorrent protocol basically hasn't changed in more than a decade. Innovation happened at the periphery, to allow peers to discover themselves (pex, dht), to improve bandwidth management (utp), and now even to scrape in a decentralized way. There is a new version of the core protocol that solves many problems but unfortunately it's safe to say that no one will pick up on it.

p2p is indeed exploding, but it's a field that is plagued with money-grabbing schemes and so many pipe dreams only a professional plumber can conceive them. Bittorrent (and its extensions!) has stood the test of time as a protocol that does what it says on the tin and doesn't need "improvements"

[Thristle]

what is the replacement for IMAP if you are not using the browser version?

As far as i can remember, any email client i ever set up with outlook/gmail/gsuite eventually is set up using IMAP

[rakoo]

The Exchange ActiveSync thing from Microsoft is probably the most used protocol for synchronizing mails, contacts and calendars. Given its proprietary nature there must be tremendous efforts done just to understand how it works, so it's not for me.

Moreover, more and more uses of email go through the web and IMAP is an afterthought. Tutanota can send end-to-end encrypted emails... if both parties access emails through the web interface. Or it's a link to an encrypted message, but then you have to send the secure link/password some other way. ProtonMail does the same, if you want IMAP access you need to install an additional software on your machine.

IMAP used to be everywhere, but because people like shiny things it is slowly seen as a bad thing we should get rid of

[eimrine]

Button phones + laptop instead of sensor phone for everything.

Cash instead of banks (cryptocurrency is an exception).

Email + forums + IRC (sometimes) instead of Telegram or similar.

Arc lamps instead of LED if it is possible.

Singlespeed bicycle instead of ones with gears.

3-way stereo with paper diffusors and class-A amplifier instead of wide-band 1-way with plastic diffusor and class-D amplifier. And listening to as old records as possible to find on torrents, not on streaming services.

Hardly to say why I chose all of this instead of all of that, I just like it and do not care about someone's laughers.

[becquerel]

Surely banks are pretty boring. They've been around for quite a while.

[Aardwolf]

> Arc lamps instead of LED if it is possible.

What's the advantage of Arc lamps over LED?

[eimrine]

Metal-Halide lamps give the best colors, next after the Sun, which is needed for one of my hobbies.

Sodium lamps gives superior amount of lumens per watts, they are perfect for lighting up my backyard especially if using at least 600W of singular lamp. I miss the times when cities were lighted by sodium, a blue-light pollution is one of the main reason of why I use to hate cities nowadays.

Also I use a cold-cathode fluorescent lamps in some places, they are almost as good as MHL and if used correctly (no often switch on/switch off) I need to replace them maybe once per 10 years. They are hardly to get nowadays, but I have enough of spare ones for all of my expected lifetime.

[wruza]

Not a gp, but my eyes can’t stand some LEDs. I don’t know the exact physics of it, but sometimes even a reflected/diffused LED light feels like I’m looking into a laser beam. Colors are also very off, like in a ~chroma fog that isn’t there. Other people don’t notice anything strange. I’d appreciate if someone explained why, because I’m a regular trichromat with no obvious vision deviations otherwise.

[uKVZe85V]

> I’m a regular trichromat

Do you mean you have tested for usual https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dichromacy and showed that you see all shades people usually see, or have you definitely tested for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrachromacy ?

[wruza]

You made me think about it twice, tbh. I have passed regular vision tests, but never tested for tetrachromacy specifically. I can distinguish 22-35 lines here, depending on how far I sit to ignore jpeg line separating artifacts and how much I unfocus my eyes. https://kfor.com/news/test-how-many-colors-you-see-can-deter... (so silly to choose jpeg for a color test, oh internet). I don’t think I am a tetrochromat.

I failed another one which asks have you seen this color “before”, but honestly I’ll fail it even on 20 different-hue color palette because I have no color memory and my color vocabulary is on a “3-bit male” side.

Also failed “choose 2 identical out of 4” type. They are all 3+1 unless I peer very hard.

Does it say something?

[2rsf]

> Singlespeed bicycle as in fixed-gear, a drivetrain with no freewheel mechanism?

[eimrine]

I really want to get into fixed-gear culture, but in places I consider as home there are a lot of mountains, so I use a coaster hub (with breaks!) a-la Torpedo. Having a 2.0 ratio on 622 rim (this is 27" or 28" depends on tires) gives me an ability to ride all those mountains but when I go for long trips on flat road without ups and downs I use a significantly higher gear.

[the_third_wave]

Arc lamps...

Both Waterhouse and Ghnxh are encased in planklike wrappings of genuine Qwghlm wool, and the latter carries THE GALVANICK LUCIPHER. The Galvanick Lucipher is of antique design. Ghnxh, who is about a hundred years old, can only smile in condescension at Waterhouse's U.S. Navy flashlight. In the sotto voce tones one might use to correct an enormous social gaffe, he explains that the galvanick lucipher is of such a superior design as to make any further reference to the Navy model a grating embarrassment for everyone concerned. He leads Waterhouse back to a special room behind the room behind the room behind the room behind the pantry, a room that exists solely for maintenance of the galvanick lucipher and the storage of its parts and supplies. The heart of the device is a hand-blown spherical glass jar comparable in volume to a gallon jug. Ghnxh, who suffers from a pretty advanced case of either hypothermia or Parkinson's, maneuvers a glass funnel into the neck of the jar. Then he wrestles a glass carboy from a shelf. The carboy, labeled AQUA REGIA, is filled with a fulminant orange liquid. He removes its glass stopper, hugs it, and heaves it over so that the orange fluid begins to glug out into the funnel and thence into the jar. Where it splashes out onto the tabletop, something very much like smoke curls up as it eats holes just like the thousands of other holes already there. The fumes get into Waterhouse's lungs; they are astoundingly corrosive. He staggers out of the room for a while.

When he ventures back, he finds Ghnxh whittling an electrode from an ingot of pure carbon. The jar of aqua regia has been capped off now, and a variety of anodes, cathodes, and other working substances are suspended in it, held in place by clamps of hammered gold. Thick wires, in insulating sheathes of hand-knit asbestos, twist out of the jar and into the business end of the galvanick lucipher: a copper salad bowl whose mouth is closed off by a Fresnel lens like the ones on a lighthouse. When Ghnxh gets his carbon whittled to just the right size and shape, he fits it into a little hatch in the side of this bowl, and casually throws a Frankensteinian blade switch. A spark pops across the contacts like a firecracker.

For a moment, Waterhouse thinks that one wall of the building has collapsed, exposing them to the direct light of the sun. But Ghnxh has simply turned on the galvanick lucipher, which soon becomes about ten times brighter, as Ghnxh adjusts a bronze thumbscrew. Crushed with shame, Waterhouse puts his Navy flashlight back into its prissy little belt holster, and precedes Ghnxh out of the room, the galvanick lucipher casting palpable warmth on the back of his neck. "We've got about two hours before she goes dead on us," Ghnxh says significantly.

   The Cryptonomicon
   Neal Stephenson
   pp 289-290

Oh, and fixies are silly city-dweller contraptions, the grown-up version of the BMX they rode as kids. Here's a nickel, son, get yourself a derailleur. I've been cycling from more or less when I could walk - being born in the Netherlands - and never stopped. The human machine works best at a cadence of around 80-100 rpm but the landscape does not take this into account by putting hills in the way. The same goes for the weather which sometimes giveth, sometimes taketh away.

[eimrine]

Cudos to Netherlands riders! I've heard of insanely good design of your bicycles, compared to rest of the world. Don't you have a coaster brake hubs? What wheels/tires are the most common in your country?

And do not confuse an arc lamp with fictional light sources, despite of the starting arc light is really doing that kind of impression you have described.

[the_third_wave]

Yes, coaster brake hubs - "terugtraprem" in Dutch - are standard on the more traditional bikes. Those tend to run on 28"x1½" (40-635) tyres. The most common size is 28x1⅝x1⅜ (37-622).

As to arc lights that quote is somewhat - but not entirely - tongue in cheek. There is a metal-halide lamp in most video projectors (except for the more modern LED-equipped versions) and they're there for a reason, this being their wide colour spectrum. They do have quite a few disadvantages though ranging from their often relatively short life (in projector applications around 1500 hours) through the potential for self-destruction - older lamps run at higher currents and temperatures which eventually can lead to explosions - to the copious amount of heat they produce and the long startup time. Do you have a reef aquarium or do you use them as grow lights?

[eimrine]

Thank you for the answer with numbers, as another lifetime rider I consider wheels as the most important part of the bicycle and Youtube bloggers I have seen do not tell much information about wheel sizes.

I use MHL at kitchen because it makes food to look delicious and also at my workshop because sometimes I do some paint work. But a friend of mine uses MHL on growing phase and Sodium lamps while flowering because a proper use of LED requires a lens and sometimes even an active cooling.

[agento]

Lamps and light switches without wifi or bluetooth

[solardev]

I needed wireless sync for some separate light strips lately (to light up different parts of the kitchen), and I'm SO glad I chose one using its own RF protocol instead of wifi or Bluetooth. Instant on/off, pairing was a cinch, and it's been totally reliable ever since. This was the Feit Onesync, if anyone's wondering. Of course I'd have preferred a hardwired solution, but we're renters.

Meanwhile every single wifi or Bluetooth smart light I've ever tried has been a total disaster. They're all sitting in storage now, or the e-waste pile.

[szab]

Java is the most boring language that I can get any work done very quickly. I also really like boring html websites that are static served from my room with no dockerisation etc.

[insickness]

Microsoft Paint. Yes, photoshop can do 10,000 more things, but sometimes you want quick and dirty and it has all the basics you need.

[muzani]

I wish Mac and Linux had some equivalent to MS Paint. It seems like such a pain just to try to draw crop screnshots and draw circles sometimes.

[tmearnest]

Check out Shotr (https://shotr.cc) for mac and flameshot (https://flameshot.org/) for Linux! These apps are totally indispensable in my day-to-day and it sounds like it’ll solve your problem.

[muzani]

I love you. And the person who made Shottr.

[pplonski86]

There is a web version https://jspaint.app

[Aardwolf]

Kolourpaint is exactly that for Linux. It's a classical MS Paint clone, and it can take screenshots and crop. Is Qt based but works just as well in other window managers than KDE

[icemelt8]

Mac has preview.

[b3orn]

And some of the Preview features for editing/annotating images and pdfs are now included in Quick Look.

[steanne]

i use mtpaint, which is fantastically old/ugly/tiny and perfect for small jobs

[wruza]

I advise you to try Paint.NET, it’s a free and modern reincarnation of Paint Shop Pro, which was a true killer.

[wanderingmind]

Emacs and all its idiosyncrasies

[BonfaceKilz]

I agree with this. I tried other editors and they never really ever "stuck".

[neuronsong]

DOOM emacs lately... Emacs with Evil mode. Decent Vim keybindings.

[rasikjain]

Whenever I want to make a decision, I put my thoughts on paper using a pencil. This clears my brain and helps me to make an informed decision after putting PROs and CONs of a choice/selection.

[kavaruka]

django, I think that is the perfect tool to build MVP

[ktpsns]

Could not agree more. Sure, full stack JS might be nice and fancy but sometimes good old web technologies do the job.

[AeroNotix]

It feels strange to hear of Django being a "good old web technology". I remember when it was released, felt super fresh (still does!) and upended the status quo. Hard to believe that is nearing 20 years ago now.

[dvfjsdhgfv]

You can pretty well integrate Django with any JS framework you want.

[FactualActuals]

This is exactly what my new team project is doing. We need features from both Django and a frontend JS framework to accomplish our MVP.

[gregvab]

Django is not boring

[manfre]

Django is mature, stable, and battle tested without using flashy new tech. Django IS boring, but that's another one of its features.

(personal opinion, not an official Django statement)

[jonatron]

Django 1.0 was released in 2008! If old is boring, then Django is.

[notacoward]

Boring technology? Well, a drill of course.

[teeray]

Ham Radio? With a cheap handheld transceiver, I can communicate over a large portion of New England through various repeaters and repeater systems. In a dead zone, I can still likely get in touch with someone if I need help. Yes, people are still active on them.

[tomaspollak]

Local music files. Including MIDI songs, of course.

[keyle]

PHP. Still the best language for the web. The Perl of the web imho. Arguably aged better!

[tenebrisalietum]

Is Perl boring? I know it's old but I'm not sure it's boring.

Anyway I really like it when I want to something more complex than what bash can handle easily.

[Ekaros]

Linux...

From software Irfanview for personal use.

[perilunar]

For my last couple of projects: vanilla JS — no frameworks, no build steps, no bloat.

[tinglymintyfrsh]

- Ruby - because Chef

- Prey project - device lost and found

- Neovim

- sysstat (sar)

- surfraw

- parallel

- gawk

- gpg for ssh

- VMware ESXi

- hwrng for entropy

- Colo your own servers

- /etc/securetty + PAM for passwordless root login on the actual console

- Kerb 5, LDAP, RADIUS

- SNMP

- Nagios-compatible collectors

[srijanshetty]

A bunch of them:

grep/ag - text search instead of a big name startup. vim - for text editing. zsh/tmux - for terminal stuff.

Google Keep (replace with text files) - for TODO and not some fancy task management software.

[yread]

jquery. It just works. It has all the polyfills I've needed

[azangru]

Polyfills? In jQuery?

Even gov.uk has removed jQuery from its dependencies; and their browser support requirements would make a frontend developer cry.

[yread]

Well they don't call it polyfills but they implement e.g. Promise in their own way. And I've used it in the past so to get rid of jquery I would have to rewrite that code to use the native one now. For approx. 0 benefit to the end user.

[jlbbellefeuille]

Toilets. Pretty amazing longevity if you ask me.

[decibe1]

Usenet - There's still a couple of newsgroups that have some worthwhile content. I just like longform text discussions.

[peaky_blinder]

Paper and pen

[beardyw]

Let's face it, most technology is boring after about 30 minutes.

[thefz]

MP3 player. I love my FiiO X3 dearly, and it has physical buttons.

[steanne]

echo "notify-send 'tea is brewed' -t 0" | at 6:21 pm

[efesak]

Email.

[findthebug]

Html

[SanjayMehta]

A manual mechanical watch.

[neuronsong]

Analog watch... but auto-wound. Just have to wear it and it winds itself.

[SanjayMehta]

I have one of those too, but I just enjoy winding it up.

[neuronsong]

Ha. I have to admit while I don't technically have to wind it (at all) I still find myself doing that as well. Pick it up... wind it a prime number of times... put it on for the day.

[SanjayMehta]

Why a prime number?

[neuronsong]

Symmetry fixation thing. I sort of used to have to do most things an even number of times. Wind the watch. Pushups. Jumping jacks. Whatever. Anything that required a count. I switched to counting to a prime 3 or greater and the anxiety just went away. Been doing that for years now. Took me awhile to realize I was even doing it in my head... and luckily the fix was pretty easy.

[Mandatum]

awk grep vi sh jq python2 python3 java curl pipe XPath cron

[neuronsong]

Lisps. Fennel on lua.

[sameer_hacker]

Winamp for music!

[neuronsong]

OMG. I hadn't played with winamp in years. Then a few weeks ago I stumbled on webamp.org and it was such a blast from the past. Winamp in a web browser! So cool. Double click on the visualization to full-screen it.