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Comment by Crinus | Hacker News Reader

These lists are a nice idea, but i do not like the execution - they are little more than a dump of someone's bookmarks. Personally i'd like to see a bit more information about each entry, including screenshots and a short explanation about the program.

Something like Softpedia would be great (although simpler), although preferably without garbage reviews like this: https://www.softpedia.com/get/Programming/Coding-languages-C... (for a bonus WTF check the screenshot).

Alternatively (and probably easier to do) something like tinyapps.org but with a bit more information per entry.

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These kinds of link dumps usually do more harm than good. Tell me why I need something like "information architecture" or "experience monitoring", then just offer me your favorite and tell me why it's your favorite. Don't just put stuff on the list because it came up on Google and you feel like you need more stuff.

The only category I'm qualified to judge in that list is 3D modeling, and their list isn't very good in my opinion. They don't distinguish between parametric CAD and direct modeling, and they don't go into the intended use of each, like how Fusion 360 can do CAM for CNCing, or how Rhino is meant more for product design instead of physical prototyping. It really seems like the author of this list didn't use any of these.

I don’t see the harm. If I don’t know what a category name means, I just ignore it if pressed for time, or read up about it from other sources.

I don’t believe anyone is going to blindly buy or invest deeply in using some product in a field they know nothing about.

Then why have such a list in the first place?

> Something like Softpedia would be great (although simpler), although preferably without garbage reviews like this: https://www.softpedia.com/get/Programming/Coding-languages-C... (for a bonus WTF check the screenshot).

Oh lord. That was nothing short of embarrassing to read. As in I feel embarrassed on the part of whoever wrote that "review". And you were right about the screenshot lol.

Sadly most of their reviews are of similar quality to the point where i wonder why they bother. It is nice that they host a lot of the software they list (there are several programs that their original developers have long disappeared but they are still available by Softpedia) and the screenshots are often useful (...well, except in this case), but i've never seen any software review of theirs to be good (they do have some serviceable game reviews though).

Though I don't know that they're useful, I'm impressed that Softpedia gets actual humans to launch all these apps and churn out some text. Even my obscure tool to join and chapterize tracks from iTunes got a review! https://mac.softpedia.com/get/Audio/Track-Concatenator.shtml

Yes that would be Producthunt with categorized filters.

Edit: Well, discovered that this list is actually flawlessapp.io

In Producthunt it was no.5 product of the day.. https://www.producthunt.com/posts/awesome-design-tools-3059e...

And lists and a desktop UI :-P

These lists are essentially like tinyapps.com.

I don't think adding more details is a good idea - that would essentially be a duplication of content from each link on the list. The biggest value the of form of these lists (and tinyapps.com) is that I can skim them quickly. If you built an encyclopedia, somebody soon would want to have a simple list of all entries.

To add to that: if these lists were to be more detailed, they probably wouldn't exist at all, as expanding and maintaining them would be too much work.

I disagree, it's trivial these days to get a list of anything (books, movies, software etc.) simply from google, so if you are going to manually compose a list it better be A) really strictly selected based on true personal experience B) contain any kind of explanation why the item made the list. It's not supposed to turn into an encylopedia, but e.g. I find annotated bibliographies with 2-3 sentences of comments by someone knowledgeable in the field much more valuable than just a list of books.

The lists are curated. Maybe superficially, but that gets 80% of the job done and is extremely good at filtering out crap. I'd say the level of effort is just right for making the lists broadly useful, as a tool to get the general lay of the space. If they were more strict, they'd lose tools that may be useful for visitors with slightly different preferences than the curators.

Thank you. This was exactly my thought as I read the earlier critiques.

What is your skimming based on? All you can tell about the linked software is their name, is their name enough to tell you what it really is about? Most of them have "cute" names and the description is as generic as it gets, personally i'd like at least a screenshot or two.

I don't want to click on each link on the list, i want the list to have enough information so i can tell if i want to click on a link to learn more.

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