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Ask HN: What's the worst piece of software you use everyday?

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Re: Ask HN: What's the worst piece of software you use everyday?

#331
I've still havent't figure it out how to open an email in a new tab with just a single click when inside GMail. It. used to be possible, of course, like all HTML links (by clicking the middle button on my mouse, for example), but since 3 or 4 years (at least) that feature disappeared. I'm still upset about it and that is why I consider GMail "the worst" piece of software I use everyday (it's also because I don't use that much "different" pieces of software).

Re: Ask HN: What's the worst piece of software you use everyday?

#332
post #269

Android on my TV: (keeps crashing, internet sometimes not working, sound volume usually is wrong, etc.) Nvidia GeForce Experience: I don't actually use it daily, because it doesn't work. I have not been able to start it for the last 6 months without getting a startup error. I contacted Nvidia support, reinstalled, downgraded, updated, problem is still there. The tray icon always shows when there's a new update, but I…

> Nvidia GeForce Experience

My god what a bad experience... to update my graphics driver I am first forced to log-in which would be bad enough but then also solve two captchas and then for some reason these frequent driver updates are multiple gigabytes in size. I have no idea what the hell they are doing.

Re: Ask HN: What's the worst piece of software you use everyday?

#333

Microsoft Teams. I am forced to use it (work) and it is missing really basic features that messenger software had in the 1990s like Push-To-Talk, real multi-window (even with the recent "pop-out" functionality), and its UI is all the worst modern trends. You cannot extend it or fix these issues (e.g. plugins, custom CSS styles, etc). Plus it is buggy, I keep not getting calls/messages/etc, and every time my computer…

Like many others, we were also forced to use it at work, hard to pick the worse part of Teams but a big one is how slow it is from the time I click the "reply" link until I can actually type a message. So many times I click, start typing and then I notice it missed about 4 to 5 letters, and I don't even consider myself fast at typing. Oh, and how you upload a file/image, need to wait until it is fully uploaded but after that you still need to click the "Send" button to actually post the file. It's definitely an enterprise kind of app, one that makes sure you take forever to do anything.

Re: Ask HN: What's the worst piece of software you use everyday?

#334
post #283

Dropbox. I've used it for a decade, but now it's slow, bloated, and takes over CPU and memory like there isn't a single other program I need to run... and I was paying $20 for the privilege. But a few weeks ago I switched to Syncthing[0], and it's the best software transition I've ever made. Opposite of everything Dropbox is now: fast, simple, and I don't even notice it running in the background. Seamless setup, and…

What's your plan for off-site or cloud backups?

Not OP but nothing prevents you to configure Syncthing with a VPS.

Re: Ask HN: What's the worst piece of software you use everyday?

#335
Outlook for Mac.

The menu options are a mix of redundant 'possibilities' from where you find things, 'icons' that don't seem to be obvious in what they represent, the GAL is broken (w/ Office 360 cloud), the Outlook connectivity becomes disabled when I disconnect from VPN and I have to click on "Send/Receive" under I think "Tools" once to re-enable it, the list goes on.

Over 15 years ago a senior dev I worked with walked up to our (Sys Admin) communal bookshelf, and noticed a book called Outlook Annoyances. He remarked, "Hm. That looks like it's way too short of a book", something I've found hilarious to think about ever since.

Re: Ask HN: What's the worst piece of software you use everyday?

#336

One of the worst apps I use regularly has to be Google Play Music. The UI is horrible enough, but it also randomly deletes tracks from my library - including my own tracks that I recorded under my own name. And sometimes the tracks will show up again randomly. The worst is when tracks don't show up in my Songs list, but if I put it on shuffle, these tracks will start playing. I don't know what's the status now, but S…

I tried briefly to put all my music in Google play (years ago, now) and had a similar experience.

It was terrible, and I felt like I couldn't find certain tracks very easily. I wasn't sure if this was accidental, or not. Do you know why tracks are deleted from your library?

Re: Ask HN: What's the worst piece of software you use everyday?

#337

Microsoft Teams. I am forced to use it (work) and it is missing really basic features that messenger software had in the 1990s like Push-To-Talk, real multi-window (even with the recent "pop-out" functionality), and its UI is all the worst modern trends. You cannot extend it or fix these issues (e.g. plugins, custom CSS styles, etc). Plus it is buggy, I keep not getting calls/messages/etc, and every time my computer…

Don't forget Outlook randomly crashing due to the Teams "add-in" failing, and Teams thoughtfully reinstalling and re-enabling add-in whenever it gets updated.

Re: Ask HN: What's the worst piece of software you use everyday?

#338

I don't use it anymore luckily, but from a couple years ago: Xcode!! Unstable, baffling interface decisions, very poor on features and the features that are there are unreliable. By far the worst IDE I've ever used.

> By far the worst IDE I've ever used.

xcode is a total pain, but i would have to say eclipse takes the cake imo...

Re: Ask HN: What's the worst piece of software you use everyday?

#340

The Apache big data suite (Hadoop/Spark/Yarn/Hive/HDFS/etc). In several years of big data engineering work, I've believe I've seen only one application that couldn't be refactored into a simple multi-instance framework-free program. People use the big data frameworks as glorified distributed-job management tools, and the resulting systems are more fragile, more complex, more vulnerable to weird version compatibility…

Related: https://www.usenix.org/conference/hotos15/workshop-program/p...
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