What are the best brakes other than disc brakes
Brake type is a matter of personal preference, and going with what gives you the most satisfying experience on your bike. That being said, I had a couple (cyclocross) bikes with disc brakes when disc brakes started to get popular on cyclocross bikes, and after a year or two I went back to rim brakes. I found disc brakes to be unreliable and unpredictable. They can have decent stopping power, but they are heavy, ridiculously noisy, and the hype about better modulation makes no sense. If your caliper or canti brakes are set up correctly the will have much more usable modulation by design. Disc brakes are a gimmick that the bike industry has been pushing on consumers to turn bigger profit. If you are a mountain biker, there is one advantage to having disc brakes- they work great when your wheels get muddy and everything is wet. If you do most of your bicycling on pavement, rim brakes are going to be much more practical and stop you just as well. Consider that rim brakes are also disc brakes, but much bigger, quieter, and hassle free. 

The best type of bike brake is a side pull cantilever for over all power, 
reliability and cost.