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Ask HN: Things that suck?

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Re: Ask HN: Things that suck?

#31

Post by comrade1 »

na85 wrote: post #28

Javascript. It's possibly the worst language I've ever had the misfortune of coming across, and it's gained this cult-like devoted fan base amongst the startup crowd. Everyone tries to cram Javascript into applications it's completely unsuitable for like desktop non-browser 3D gaming or encryption. It is an enabler of pervasive surveillance by marketers and a huge security risk for the privacy-conscious. Not to menti…

Javascript is fine in itself as a language, but no one uses it like it's meant to be used. It's a prototype inheritance language and yet people try to use it like regular java (classes and instances).

The problem you probably have is with the DOM, not the language.

Re: Ask HN: Things that suck?

#32

Post by maaaats »

matthewmacleod wrote: post #20
Kenji wrote: post #6

Skype. Everyone has it and it's so bad. Random freezes of the conversation or the window, call drops (Teamspeak has almost none), can't disable alerts for file transfers in a group chat, the search doesn't work properly (can't find words that are there) in a long chat log. I could go on. I have used many chat clients in my life, but I have never seen such a bad implementation before. It is a mystery to me why everyon…

I'd extend this to videoconferencing and remote meeting solutions in general. I've never found anything that works reliable, across platforms, with a simple interface, can scale to larger events, and so on. You'd think it would be a solved problem by now.

When talking with a remote clients/offices, we've found http://appear.in/ to be great. No hassle with adding each other on Skype/Google, just send a link. Even supports screen sharing when demoing. Not saying it will be a silver bullet for your listed issues, though.

Re: Ask HN: Things that suck?

#33

Post by johnchristopher »

Many times a day I want to share an url with my SO. I use a desktop, she uses a laptop and half of the time I just give up. Opening a mail client, or facebook, wait for the app/website to load, find a textfield on the screen, type her name, correct auto complete, no I don't need a subject, yes I want to send it... half of the time I give up.

I wish there was something like her picture in my browser toolbar and when clicked it asks me "send that page to X?" and I hit enter et voilà. It should not ask me if I want to send it via fb, mail, tw or anything (I would be okay with configuring it but only once. Ideally all our messages should be sent through a private hub that dispatch to the recipient's fb/tw/email but I disgress).

I might try hitting addons.mozilla.org/firefox/ after posting this.

Re: Ask HN: Things that suck?

#35

Post by paulgb »

Omniusaspirer wrote: post #30
paulgb wrote: post #25

Cancelling services (phone, internet, etc.) It took me 40 minutes (mostly on hold) to cancel my internet the other day, a problem I wish I could pay someone else to take care of.

Unfortunately this is something that is intentionally designed to suck in almost all cases. It's even hard to pay someone else to do the canceling for you since you're generally required to offer up a lot of personal info to verify that it is in fact you that wants to cancel the account. I've personally had this range from phone number all the way up to SSN.

I'm not a lawyer but could something like temporary power of attorney be used here?

Re: Ask HN: Things that suck?

#37

Post by huhtenberg »

na85 wrote: post #28

Javascript. It's possibly the worst language I've ever had the misfortune of coming across, and it's gained this cult-like devoted fan base amongst the startup crowd. Everyone tries to cram Javascript into applications it's completely unsuitable for like desktop non-browser 3D gaming or encryption. It is an enabler of pervasive surveillance by marketers and a huge security risk for the privacy-conscious. Not to menti…

Worse than PHP? :)

Re: Ask HN: Things that suck?

#38

Post by sehr »

CmonDev wrote: post #14

1. HTML (no fashionable crap like Bootstrap or flexbox is capable of giving me somethong as simple as XAML's grid, also dozens of quirks - http://wtfhtmlcss.com ). 2. JavaScript (not just dynamic but weak as well + dozens of quirks - http://wtfjs.com ). 3. Node.js and its hype, but at least I can avoid it.

Node.js is so last year.

But in all honesty, it's transformed browser development. Common JS is everywhere now

Re: Ask HN: Things that suck?

#39

Post by VLM »

robinhoodexe wrote: post #19

Having a physical card[1] with challenge & response codes for when using my bank and all pulic services in Denmark. I actually thought about making a simple CLI program that can OCR the card using tesseract[2], convert the output to a simple sqlite database and use GnuPG[3] to encrypt the database. The user feeds the application (probably just a simple bash script) the given challenge code, decrypts the database and…

Maybe start somewhere a little more basic.

I've got C+R "cards" for my google acct and treasurydirect. And thats it.

A little more might be nice.

Re: Ask HN: Things that suck?

#40

Post by hellbanTHIS »

There are a lot of terrible things out there but one that really bugs me is all the misinformation/propaganda that the internet causes. I didn't see it coming, I thought the web would make people more informed, not less.
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