Ask HN: What is the best money you have spent on software? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What is the best money you have spent on software?

12 pointsjilles28 comments

I pay for a few services such as 1Password and Fantastical. Both these services are very much worth the money for me. I was wondering if there is any other paid software / SaaS that is a must have for some.

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Beyond Compare (a cross-platform file/directory comparison tool) [0] is an absolute marvel. Extremely useful, and a very user-friendly license.

[0] https://www.scootersoftware.com/

Huh, we have licenses for this at my job, but I haven't used it much so far. I'll have to look more into it.

Divvy: Super efficient window management https://mizage.com/divvy/

YNAB - it seems unnecessary to some.. but I've got into an awesome routine after using it for 4+ years.

Have u looked at buckets? It's the same principle but it desktop software. I think it lacks bank integration

YNAB bank integration isn't anything to write home about. Barely works in Canada.

Reaper DAW has been phenomenal and is quite affordable. I've used it constantly for probably 10 years now. https://www.reaper.fm/download.php

Synthesia: Piano midi software

During the lockdown i thought of learning the piano and this software really helped me. Since all the classes were online now.

https://synthesiagame.com/

A donation to GNU project was the best money I spent on software

Interesting point. While I sympathize with the cause, I personally wouldn't find it the best money spent, had I donated, because it is impossible to measure the impact of the money spent.

Little less than a must have, but Sublime Merge (from the makers of SublimeText) has been a great Git GUI. Especially since Linux lacks an initiative snappy one.

TextSniper[0]: allows you to copy/paste text from images

aText[1]: keyboard shortcuts app

Super cheap (~5$) and can't work without them!

[0] https://www.textsniper.app/

[1] https://www.trankynam.com/atext/

Edit: formatting

A few that come to mind:

FullConvert - for automating database conversions Beyond Compare - for comparing Folders, Files, Tabular Data

Fastmail, to remove a fat Google dependency from my life. It's been great. Its aliasing features are cool.

Bitwarden has met all my password management needs for several years now. (Donation/pro version, can't remember.)

Adespresso

Might be the only digital marketer comment here, but it was defiantly worth the 39$, saves tons of times and generate a lot of data that is needed for my testing

$10 or so for a Red Hat Linux book circa 1996, which included an install CDROM.

iOS app Photo Pills (https://www.photopills.com/) to plan for Astrophotography.

Pixelmator ($39, one time) - for image editing

ScreenFlow, ($129, one time) - for recording/editing videos

Sublime Text ($59, one time in 2011) - have since moved on, but used for many years

https://cvcompiler.com/ high ROI investment

I hardly ever pay for software, but my best one was a very subsidized MS Office one time purchase.

Anyone bought a bot for buying high demand items online? Is it worth it?

Yes, but building one is better.

Ableton Live and Dorico for making music. Both worth every penny.

Jet brains license, Viscosity, Sublime, Lastpass, Little Snitch

Tasker.

But, it's an android app. Helps automate your phone.

Nova launcher, pro version.

PyCharm

My favorites:

- Jetbrains software

- 1password

- Divvy

- Dash (for docs)

Very little is coming to mind, so much good free stuff out there.

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