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Ask HN: Programs that wasted you 100 hours?
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Re: Ask HN: Programs that wasted you 100 hours?
#92Microsoft Word, every single time I have to produce a document in which there is a lot of content. Edit a table, it screws up the image legends, which in turn screws up the table of contents. Fix the table of contents, and the something else in the document breaks. I curse my existence every time I have to use anything from microsoft in my job. Having done consulting for many clients across a myriad of environments and configs, whenever anything microsoft was involved, it was a given that any task would take at least double the time and require more resources.
Using MS Word however is the thing, that almost every time, drives very close to jumping out of window.
Re: Ask HN: Programs that wasted you 100 hours?
#93Fixing plsql errors in Oracle. Only a c++ compiler in a bad mood gives more errors or as inscrutable ones ...
Re: Ask HN: Programs that wasted you 100 hours?
#94Program that saved me 100 hours: using LaTeX to write a scientific paper. Program that wasted me 100 hours: using LaTeX to make the poster for said scientific paper. LaTeX is great for when you need to focus on your content and don't have much time to spend on the presentation. However, once the presentation is the entire point , LaTeX is not the right tool. Well, except if you like boring posters.
Agree with both sides of latex
Re: Ask HN: Programs that wasted you 100 hours?
#95I apologize for saying this in advance but I'd have to say for me it's GIMP. Even after all its feature and popularity I find it extremely hard to use and often end up wasting hours trying to create a simple graphic. As a last resort I always end up booting Windows just to use Photoshop to do the same. I have been trying to move away from Windows to linux and so far I'm super happy with everything. But Photoshop is t…
IMHO, Gimp was much easier to use before they revamped the GUI to imitate Photoshop. For those who didn’t try it, it looked like this: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cleaning_up_Fourie...
Shit, that's exactly what photoshop used to look like (photoshop 7)
Re: Ask HN: Programs that wasted you 100 hours?
#96Nvidia GPU drivers and CUDA installations on Linux. Got better recently but I've spent many nights fixing these installs, wrestling with nouveau etc.
Compilation of deep learning libraries from source on Windows -- don't do it.
Tikz -- LaTeX drawing "language". The images produced can be stuninngly beatiful, but the manual has 1200+ pages and it takes forever to become productive. If only journals accepted hand-drawn images...
Re: Ask HN: Programs that wasted you 100 hours?
#97Microsoft Outlook, no question: - It hangs all the time for a few seconds at a time, - The search is moronic (how about you look on the server and on my computer at the same time instead of hanging for a while and then displaying that dumbass message offering the option to search on my computer instead when there's a problem with the connection?), - Switching to the unread message view regularly results in a progress…
I used to love Outlook until my work switched over to Office 365 version of Outlook. Now it is driving me nuts. The small things such as the animations when switching between mail and calendar, the way it displays conversations, the way it searches. I could go on, but I think we are on the same sinking boat here.
Re: Ask HN: Programs that wasted you 100 hours?
#98Nvidia GPU drivers and CUDA installations on Linux. Got better recently but I've spent many nights fixing these installs, wrestling with nouveau etc. Compilation of deep learning libraries from source on Windows -- don't do it. Tikz -- LaTeX drawing "language". The images produced can be stuninngly beatiful, but the manual has 1200+ pages and it takes forever to become productive. If only journals accepted hand-drawn…
Can second this.
Also audio libraries on linux. ALSA vs whatever. Had a lot of issues with my particular hardware & Arch.
Also way back when, X itself. Back when it was likely to not work on many systems (~2001). I spent so many hours going back and forth to use my friend's computer & internet to Altavista some help.
Re: Ask HN: Programs that wasted you 100 hours?
#99Microsoft Powerpoint (and to a lesser extent Word). I lost count of the number of days I spent trying to make my presentations and documents look good (which for me means pixel perfect). To be clear, this isn’t a failing of the software per se. PowerPoint is powerful and lets you do a lot of stuff, but I took desktop publishing lessons in high school, and I’m a bit obsessive to start with. I just have to have everyth…
At my current company, Powerpoint is used as the main medium for communication and reporting. Powerpoint slide decks are even considered some form of documentation by many, even though they are not really suited for that: Bullet points instead of coherent prose and explanations, ambiguity on the audience of the presentation (internal vs customer), general clunkiness of a ppt files. For many projects, documentation is…
So do you have any go to tips or shortcut (keys) that are your favorite?
Re: Ask HN: Programs that wasted you 100 hours?
#100first time hacking on Mac OS Carbon. I had to port my open source project (which ran on linux and Win32), to Mac (circa 2008?). I'd never built a thing on a mac before.. at that point, Mac dev wasn't as big as it is now (and then it was C++).. so Googling no help at all.. compiler errors, linker errors.. 6 months of 15 hour days.. completely lost most of the time.