Ask HN: How do you find tools? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you find tools?

19 pointsvaporup13 comments

Hi,

I wondered how you discover new tools or find existing ones for your needs very quickly?

Using Google or searching in Github can become quite time consuming.

Currently I use

  - Hacker News (of course)
  - https://www.libhunt.com
  - https://sysadmin.libhunt.com
  - https://awesomeopensource.com
  - https://directory.fsf.org
  - https://repology.org
  - https://debtags.debian.org
  - Awesome Lists on Github
  - YouTube Channels where
    tools are shown/recommended...

View on HN

This maybe a bit redundant -- but IMO it's always worth a quick stop at `https://alternativeto.net/` since you can specify OS & License types, etc and read a few reviews.

I've also started to find some neat stuff with `https://github.com/trending` - has been good for finding some good jumping-off points for subjects where I don't always have my finger on the pulse.

It's nice to get out of the echo-chamber and see what the other side of the shop is innovating. It helps me solve problems in ways I might not have come up with - and I've thankfully made lots of friends in Art, Design, UI/UX, and FrontEnd now because of it...so it's easier to keep up with for me now.

I don't think that's an especially hot take on HN though, but just putting it out there in case someone needed to hear it.

AlternativeTo is terrible, riddled with fake reviews and so blatant as well.

I don't entirely disagree.

Google search: '[topic] awesome'. For example, 'react awesome' or 'web dev awesome'. Next, look for a github repo. You can also add "site:github.com" to your search, such as, "image editing awesome site:github.com".

This was a great tip given to me by a friend. I've found some amazing tools and resources because of it.

You mean you've found some... ~awesome~ tools from it?

One could say that :)

Don't overlook the "topics" of GH and GL; they (currently) require the repo owner to apply those labels, so it can be hit-or-miss but often works pretty well

* e.g. https://github.com/topics/aws

* https://gitlab.com/explore/projects/topics/aws

Web Tools Weekly is a good one [1]. I've discovered – and used – all sorts of useful tools through it since I signed up.

https://webtoolsweekly.com/

There are sites like stackshare.io Many of these are quite shallow content, but they should be good for a quick search

I write my own.

Link?

I also write my own; often the existing ones are not good enough, or I cannot find any, etc. But, sometimes I will find something suitable in the package manager.

twitter, producthunt, hackernews mostly. But twitter is more spot on.

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