Which boring technology do you still use?

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Lamps and light switches without wifi or bluetooth

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.

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.

Emacs and all its idiosyncrasies

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.

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

Boring technology? Well, a drill of course.

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.

Local music files. Including MIDI songs, of course.

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

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.

Linux...

From software Irfanview for personal use.

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

- 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

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.

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

Toilets. Pretty amazing longevity if you ask me.

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

Paper and pen

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

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

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

Email.

Html

A manual mechanical watch.

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

Lisps. Fennel on lua.

Winamp for music!