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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?

#771

Post by _-___________-_ »

Mekantis wrote: post #764

Probably Linux. I don't understand how people put up with things like PulseAudio. If I use Windows, the audio sinks behave like I expect them to. They use the device I expect them to. They don't mysteriously set the volume to some bizarre level that has nothing to do with anything when I start a new program, or change the video I'm watching on YouTube, or open a new video in VLC. Whenever I use any audio-capable appl…

Heavy PulseAudio user here, and occasional developer on the project. Pulse is very unlikely to be doing what you describe itself, it is probably something further up the stack in your desktop environment or whatever that is helpfully trying to manage Pulse for you, or alternatively some plugin that your distro added. This sort of demonstrates one problem with Linux - the fragmentation.

OTOH, my Windows 10 computer displays almost exactly the behaviour you describe - when plugging headphones in, some applications will inexplicably continue using the speakers. Volume levels change without any obvious reason between different connections of the same device. Sometimes I have to select the speaker output and then the headphone output and it will magically start working. All of that would be fine, except for the real problem: there is basically no way for me to properly debug and solve this problem, whereas solving your problem on Linux would be relatively trivial for anyone with a bit of experience, even if it is in fact a bug in Pulse.

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

#773

Post by _-___________-_ »

FVIIIvWF wrote: post #770

I feel the other comments are really first-world problems. As a doctor from a developed country, the worst piece of software would be my hospital's clinical portal. Not only it is painful to use, I believe the inefficiency it causes actually is detrimental to patient's care and the health economy in general. I happen to know some web development, so here's a few observations from top of my head: - Slow speed. Simple…

> Do we have anyone in the community that can enlighten me on the root case?

The technical root causes are pretty boring really. The root cause is the way that software purchasing happens in sectors like healthcare, education, government.

Your portal software undoubtedly cost an eye-watering amount of money, almost all of which went to middlemen while the actual software was built by an outsourcing company probably in a market with very cheap low-skill programming labour, who have probably developed a specialty in taking advantage of unclear requirements to get paid even while delivering a turd.

The middlemen have great LinkedIn profiles and many contacts in the healthcare industry, and the software works (the only people complaining about it are the people who actually have to use it, but thankfully none of the people responsible for buying this software actually have to use it!) so the work keeps rolling in.

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

#774

Post by noema »

overgard wrote: post #28

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.

I haven't used Xcode much personally, but it automatically shoots up to the top of my hate list on account of the fact that it's a mandatory 20GB hog just to use the iOS Simulator. In my particular use case (React Native + Expo development), attempting to manually prune the installation files of SDK packages I will never use (e.g. Watch) somehow breaks the simulator.

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

#775

Post by userbinator »

abhgh wrote: post #501
Someone1234 wrote: post #35

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…

Tell me about it. We moved from Slack to Teams to cut costs. Common story. Leaves a LOT to be desired. 1. The UI took the fun out of well, whatever, Slack was/is. For some of the common interest channels at work, I see less people going to them. 2. I'm in a group where we frequently need to share images (mostly plots) among the members. Sometimes they just disappear. Yes. You upload an image during a conversation, co…

5. You cannot specify a Download folder. Yes that's a thing in 2020.

Considering that browsers have also adopted this "modern stupidity" for a while, I'm not so surprised, but the lack of a "Save As" option definitely perplexed me the first few times I've tried to download something --- clicking Download and expecting at least a choice, but seeing "download complete" makes me think where did it go!?!?

The response to that feedback item is baffling, but it's definitely not an uncommon thing for a big bureaucracy like MS. The actual code change probably takes minutes, but the mound of process associated with it causes these sorts of anti-decisions to occur.

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

#779

Post by pragmatic »

FVIIIvWF wrote: post #770

I feel the other comments are really first-world problems. As a doctor from a developed country, the worst piece of software would be my hospital's clinical portal. Not only it is painful to use, I believe the inefficiency it causes actually is detrimental to patient's care and the health economy in general. I happen to know some web development, so here's a few observations from top of my head: - Slow speed. Simple…

Sounds like a mess. If each piece is from a different provider, who put it together?

I've seen what my doctor uses and know from relatives and friends what a pain it was to implement. And this is one of, if not the leader in clinical software. It was an "epic" disaster but now it seems ok-ish. Very user unfriendly still, but I'm sure it gives the hospital administrators the ability to spy, err I mean generate reports.

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

#780

Post by userbinator »

fmpwizard wrote: post #333
Someone1234 wrote: post #35

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 af…

There's also a very noticeable lag on mute/unmute, that causes others in a conversation to miss the first word or two that I say immediately after unmuting. The workaround is to wait a second or two before speaking, but I've used VoIP and video back in the MSN Messenger days, on a far less powerful machine, and it didn't have that problem.
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