Belar

Very broad question, there are a lot, but they differ in purpose, efficiency and "target" user. I don't think there is a more efficient text input device that [some kind of] keyboard or as accurate and unrestricted pointing device as mouse (touch is close, but requires proper UI) for an average user.

Touch made a great leap in performance, compare today's smartphone (taps, double taps, "3D touch", slides, multi-touch) to an old Palm device (stylus required, unregistered inputs etc.).

Speech recognition is pretty well developed, works great for note-taking, control with short commands, but it depends on a language (some are working better than others) and is prone to error, especially with non-native speakers (accents) or unfriendly environment (noise, multiple people talking, changing volume). Would it be comfortable to dictate a book or code? Probably not.

Kinect, ZKOO and Leap Motion are probably the most popular gesture tracking device, but amount of required energy makes these very inefficient for daily tasks - it's ok to get a bit tired when playing a game, but couple hours of "minority report action" would be very uncomfortable.

In addition to that there are devices like "magic wand" or Eyegaze/Tobi (eye/attention tracking), they are mature for a certain group.

We have vast amount of advanced input methods, they just shine in different areas.

Pretty much always you can "give them a $20", every medium+ sized project has some kind of support program going or accepts donations.

However, if they don't or someone doesn't have a $20 to throw at open source, there are a lot of ways to help. Just to mention a few (assuming you are at least an active user):

- help less experienced users (answer community questions, reported issues etc.),

- improve documentation (documentation is never finished),

- share your knowledge about a tool (write an article, tutorial),

- take part in tests and report bugs,

- apply your skills (design, writing, community management etc.) to aid project's needs,

- create (and maintain) a useful "resource" (e.g. list of example projects, plugin reviews).

There are many ways that often go "unnoticed" or rather... no one may officially pat you on the back for it, but it helps.

There are tons, maybe not direct alternatives, but you are not looking for one. It's hard to suggest anything without knowing what kind of "junior dev" you are, but usually specializations, frameworks and even languages have their own communities (Slack, Gitter, forum, Discord, subreddit, you name it), you should look there.

Just don't forget about doing your homework first, amount of effort you put into a question directly influences answers you get. If you take time to do a research, share what you already learned/tried, build a good case with code example (e.g. minimal reproduction on jsFiddle or Codepen) and make it easy for people to help you, you will get help. Otherwise, everywhere you will experience what you did on SO.

Not sure if you mean any specific problems, but yes, vehicle with electronic power system would work on Mars.

Good example of that are Mars exploration rovers (e.g. Curiosity, Spirit), which are exploring Mars since 2003 and use battery power (with solar panels for charging).

There is no perfect formula for posting. Some say you should post on Wednesday, 5pm PST etc., but it doesn't mean you will sky-rocket with up votes.

Personally I avoid weekends, but HN is hard anyway (At least I had no luck.).

I like to connect developing design myself and using bootstrap. First to give unique touch to a website, second to speed things up since I have already written my part of floats for webdesign industry and will be fine with just adding proper classes now. That's why it's there after all, to use it. :)