
Tools of the Trade, from Hacker News - rayascott
https://github.com/cjbarber/ToolsOfTheTrade
======
ObsoleteNerd
I find that my problem isn't finding services that match a requirement I have,
but picking which one to use. It's totally overwhelming how many services do
pretty much exactly the same thing these days.

I love that it's like this in the sense that there's healthy competition and
they're all pushing each other forward, giving each other ideas to improve,
etc... but as a pure consumer of these services, it's incredibly daunting to
actually choose which to use.

~~~
nkantar
I very much feel like this as well (on both counts), especially about CI.

I'd love to hear any strategies folksight have for coping with this and
actually making decisions without looking into every single option, if that's
a thing.

~~~
frading
What I like to do sometimes is contact the support of the apps I'm hesitating
on. Whichever is most responsive/helpful wins, as it's a good sign they
actually care.

~~~
nkantar
I hadn't thought of that, but it sounds like a useful thing to test out.
Thanks!

------
timonovici
Doesn't anybody do shit on their laptop anymore or on their own server? Why
does it have to be 10 thousand services, why the dependency on the network and
other entities? How many of these will go bankrupt by the end of the year, how
many will change their terms in an incompatible way with your company project
or your personal one?

~~~
theshrike79
When you have your own server, you're also the server admin. When that server
craps out, so do ALL of the services on it and it's you who will spend nights
and weekends fixing it.

Or you can pay a few bucks here and few bucks there and the uptime is Somebody
Else's Problem.

~~~
sh87
And you now have to trust this random 'someone else' to have done a better job
than you can. My intuition says there's more FUD around uptime and
availability than it deserves. If anything, the hard work of maintaining
uptime and security is a great learning path that should not be missed by
beginners and small teams alike.

------
lettergram
Related to this, using: [https://hnprofile.com/](https://hnprofile.com/)

You can identify who is an expert related to each tool or any topic in general

~~~
shawn
The mood detection may as well be RNG.

I have an even better way to identify who is an expert on HN. Say "It's silly
that X still isn't a thing." If X is a thing, you'll get ten people telling
you why you're wrong within ten minutes. Example:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17941772](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17941772)

You'll have to trade some karma for the answer though.

~~~
mattnewton
What else is karma for? :D I have seen this technique used to great effect
inside large companies too. People will spend a lot of effort telling you why
you are dead wrong.

~~~
mr_toad
[https://www.xkcd.com/386/](https://www.xkcd.com/386/)

------
ROFISH
Needs to denote difference between price per month and price per user per
month.

Especially on items like support and HR. Apps that charge per user in “flat
hierarchy” companies like mine where any employee can do anything is death to
your service because I’m not paying for all my employees when we equally share
the workloads depending on schedule.

~~~
davisonio
This is something I'd definitely be interested in adding to this list. Trouble
is that services are changing their pricing very frequently.

------
redm
Time to remove [https://www.blitz.io/](https://www.blitz.io/) from the list or
add them to a dead-pool. Looks like they are shutting down October 1st, 2018.
:(

"It's time to say farewell... Blitz will be shutting down on October 1, 2018.
We'll no longer be accepting new subscriptions. Subscriptions will not be
renewed after June 30, 2017. Your account credits will still be accepted until
October 1, 2018."

------
avip
Not affiliated but gcp could use some more recognition... as quick example
firebase is also "deployment" and "identity verification". It's only mentioned
as "database" which really does not do it much justice.

------
tcmb
The contributing guidelines page at [https://github.com/davisonio/awesome-
irc/blob/master/CONTRIB...](https://github.com/davisonio/awesome-
irc/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md) gives a 404.

Wanted to mention mattermost.com/.org as a Slack alternative in the Group
Communication/Chat Tools section.

~~~
jwilk
The correct link is:
[https://github.com/cjbarber/ToolsOfTheTrade/blob/master/CONT...](https://github.com/cjbarber/ToolsOfTheTrade/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md)

I submitted PR to fix this:
[https://github.com/cjbarber/ToolsOfTheTrade/pull/325](https://github.com/cjbarber/ToolsOfTheTrade/pull/325)

------
kstenerud
By chance, has anyone made a curated list of self-hosted things?

~~~
odie88
I think this one covers self-hosted nicely:
[https://github.com/Kickball/awesome-
selfhosted](https://github.com/Kickball/awesome-selfhosted)

------
dandare
I don't understand why is there not more competition / options in the BaaS
area. User management is stable, almost boring functionality required by every
single product.

~~~
abraham_lincoln
Any thoughts, folks?

Is this a good opportunity?

~~~
shawn
Sure, everything is an opportunity. Make it happen!

On the other hand, the traditional wisdom is that a lack of competition isn't
a good sign.

~~~
abraham_lincoln
That is what I was thinking, no competitors = red flag.

Is it really that hard to roll your own and do you really want that being
maintained by a 3rd party?

------
seany
Why are most of these services rather than open source projects that fill
these roles?

~~~
abraham_lincoln
We used to build startups by piecing together other open-source offerings with
our own programmatic secret sauce.

Cash is plentiful and time is valuable, so it is now easier to patch together
a bunch of SaaS tools.

------
systematical
I would add site24x7.com for server monitoring. We're monitoring all sites and
services in our small startup for just $10 a month. Sends out all type of
threshold alerts and supports scheduled maintenance. Many other features I
haven't even scratched the surface of.

~~~
davisonio
Nice idea, feel free to send over a pull request

------
emmanueloga_
How come all these awesome lists use free form markdown? This is the sort of
data that should have some sort of structure, if only just a schema less json
file. That would make it easy to run a script from time to time to, for
instance, remove 404 entries.

~~~
southerndrift
Because writing markup is more fun than writing JSON. If you want to automate
something, you just need a regular expression to get whatever you want.

~~~
petepete
But but but what about XSLT?

------
yread
It's also a nice resource of company one liners!

------
panchicore3
Anyone knows about a team shifting saas around there?

A tool that could help me to design and automatize a shift schedule for
security guards for instance.

Basically I am looking at the following assumptions: \- 24/7 coverage \- 8
hours shift \- 40 annual leaves days per year \- 14 days of certified sick and
uncertified sick leaves per year. \- need for 52 periods of 2 consecutive days
off (week ends). \- team composed of 3 personnel. \- 15 working days of
training in the year. \- teams of 3 personnel for each shift.

So I could easily answer how many teams of 3 personnel do I need and what type
of shift schedule works for that?

Would you have any idea about that? Thanks.

~~~
akg_67
If you have a business school locally, ask a MBA student/professor.

It is a standard resource allocation problem in decision support model,
supply/resource allocation and management courses in MBA program.

If you do little bit digging online for textbooks in this area and available
supplemental materials, you should be able to find a pre-designed spreadsheet
to solve your problem.

------
doitLP
I've got to mention [https://www.logrocket.com](https://www.logrocket.com),
for error tracking, APM and user testing combined. Great price point, great
support and absolutely changed the way we understand and capture errors. I'll
create a PR to add it.

------
norswap
Great to go fast, but know you're building on shaky grounds that will shift
underneath you.

------
joshu
I keep forgetting about this and I am always surprised when I click through.

------
Shinkirou
Great list! Dropbox Paper is missing in the notes section.

------
lfx
Great list! Thank you author!

Side note - does anybody tried clockify.me ? Looks awesome, and it's free!
Wondering how they earn money and how reliable they are.

~~~
aristotle2
It's legit. There is a paid plan (buried in extra features section), plus big
companies pay lots of money for self-hosting and custom development

------
magnetic
What a great (and overwhelming) list!

In the code hosting section keybase seems to be missing. It has git support.

~~~
davisonio
Thank you! Maybe Keybase is worth adding but git support is not one of its
stand out features IMO

~~~
magnetic
Agreed, but _Encrypted_ Git is... they don't see your repo.

I don't know anybody else who does it.

------
dd36
What does everyone use to pull credit reports? Is there a good, affordable
vendor with an API?

------
ArtWomb
Excellent list! But you should probably add AirTable ;)

~~~
davisonio
Thank you :) Airtable is a good one!

------
submeta
Missing joplin in the note taking tools section. - Great list though!

~~~
davisonio
Thank you

