MacOS
Anybody else gets audio skipping with Spotify and random app freezes? Feels worse than an obscure Linux distro.
Ask HN: What's the most overengineered tool everyone uses but won't admit sucks?
31–40 of 47 posts
Re: Ask HN: What's the most overengineered tool everyone uses but won't admit sucks?
#32[dead]
Re: Ask HN: What's the most overengineered tool everyone uses but won't admit sucks?
#33Re: Ask HN: What's the most overengineered tool everyone uses but won't admit sucks?
#34JIRA might be like C++. It's OK if you just use a subset, and everyone uses the same one. If you use all of it, though, you get a mess.
The fundamental problem with JIRA is that it's trying to be usable for all the workflows in all companies in all the world. It's hard to do that simply.
And the problem with using it is that companies don't fix their workflow; they just try to port their existing workflow to JIRA. The result is that all the frustrations with the workflow turn into "frustrations with JIRA" (on top of the frustrations that are actually due to JIRA itself).
Re: Ask HN: What's the most overengineered tool everyone uses but won't admit sucks?
#35Next.js: - so many rendering modes - SSG, SSR, ISR, streaming SSR, PPR, client and server components. - de facto Vercel lock in: edge runtime, middleware, image optimization, ISR, and lots more are massively complex to set up or less performant off Vercel. - fragmented ecosystem between app and page router. - so much boilerplate with the app router: layout.js, loading.js, error.js, page.js Not everything here is bad…
Next.js feels like a tech demo that exists to demonstrate a bunch of highly optimised paths to frontend development. Yes, my page probably will load faster if I did so and so, but all the work required for it is not worth the 2ms saved.
I'm sure someone will chime in with "skill issue", and that's true to some extent, but you gotta admit it's an over-engineered "solution".
Re: Ask HN: What's the most overengineered tool everyone uses but won't admit sucks?
#36Next.js: - so many rendering modes - SSG, SSR, ISR, streaming SSR, PPR, client and server components. - de facto Vercel lock in: edge runtime, middleware, image optimization, ISR, and lots more are massively complex to set up or less performant off Vercel. - fragmented ecosystem between app and page router. - so much boilerplate with the app router: layout.js, loading.js, error.js, page.js Not everything here is bad…
Next.js feels like a tech demo that exists to demonstrate a bunch of highly optimised paths to frontend development. Yes, my page probably will load faster if I did so and so, but all the work required for it is not worth the 2ms saved. I'm sure someone will chime in with "skill issue", and that's true to some extent, but you gotta admit it's an over-engineered "solution".
Next was so good at first with just the page router and ISR. That solved like 90% of common front-end headaches, especially compared to the hodgepodge of other React Frankensteins at the time.
Then they pivoted to the overengineered insanity that is RSC and the app router.
I have yet to see a project or developer use that to its potential. I don't know who they're targeting anymore, feels like some sort of mythical 100x developer who loves hyper optimizing every paragraph differently.
I work in support (for another company) now and several times a week I see Next users confused by all the different options. Their documentation isn't great at explaining all the differences either. They're moving way too fast and leaving all the developers behind and adding more and more black box magic optimized for Vercel hosting.
Enshittification as always, I suppose.
Maybe it's time to fork it into something simpler and stabler? I would be perfectly happy with Next from four or five years ago. Prev.js?
Re: Ask HN: What's the most overengineered tool everyone uses but won't admit sucks?
#37Git. Most people have no need for 95 percent of its features and don't have a good mental model of how it works. Just copy and paste commands to get it to work, more or less.
Git is the one software that I know less about the more I use it. 10+ years now, and every month I learn some new quirk. It very much has that "designed by engineers, for one particular super smart engineer, gl everyone else" vibe. I'm like a 0.5x dev at best and my brain doesn't have enough folds to fit its mental model.
Re: Ask HN: What's the most overengineered tool everyone uses but won't admit sucks?
#38Git. Most people have no need for 95 percent of its features and don't have a good mental model of how it works. Just copy and paste commands to get it to work, more or less.
Nobody knows how it works, but we have a good mental model of the high level behavior, and we understand the features we actually use.
I didn't use to be a religious man. Then I started using git and now I understand the power of prayer.
Re: Ask HN: What's the most overengineered tool everyone uses but won't admit sucks?
#39MacOS
It's not what you'd expect for a linux machine but it just works and has a reliable ecosystem with iOS. The worst is trying to understand how it stores information, but again if you're expecting control like in a linux machine, prepare to be disappointed.
I think MacOS is simply a terrible UNIX environment, period. The BSD bones are good, but the XNU kernel itself is a disaster and the way Apple handles user isolation, package management and runtime idempotency borders on outright neglect. Kernel extensions are depreciated and no DKMS equivalent exists, 32-bit support gets axed overnight and even simple drivers can't be ported from other UNIX-likes to MacOS. No wonder Linux is considered a more serious standard, all the UNIXes are trying to fucking murder each other instead of progressing the POSIX standard!
It really does not "just work", unless you're treating the Mac like an iPad. 20 years ago the Mac compiled software just as good as anything else, today it can't install Vulkan headers because third-party software scares Apple. Simply holding Apple to the standards of their contemporaries reveals that they're paranoid and do not trust their users.
Re: Ask HN: What's the most overengineered tool everyone uses but won't admit sucks?
#40MacOS
Big one, but I've had a few people who admit that it's shit. It's shit but it's just enough to get the job done/get out of your way, As long as you play by its rules
I think you could copy/paste this excuse for the failings of every computer operating system since XP.
"Just enough" isn't going to cut it when the rest of the experience is subscription slopware, dark patterns and hidden advertisements. Microsoft doesn't get a free pass for it and neither does Apple - OSes weren't always like this!