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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?

#671

Post by bluedevil2k »

lvass wrote: post #195

WhatsApp. The desktop version has very few features, requires constant connection to a mobile phone and gets out of sync very often. It's practically irremediable if you're in a crowded wi-fi area and ethernet is the only way to get a good connection. It's also designed so no conversation is ever private despite advertising it's E2E encryption. Everyone you talk to has automatic backups enabled and they're stored une…

The most annoying thing is that you can’t just message a new phone number. You have to create a contact and then add their phone number to that contact, close the contact app to go back to WhatsApp, press “+” again, search for the contact you just made, select it, then start typing. God forbid the phone number is entered wrong and you have to go back into the contact app. Meeting someone in a bar/club (outside the US), it’s a 3-4 minute process with a high error rate. WhatsApp, let me type a phone number in directly into a new message!

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

#672

Post by daveyjonezz »

SamWhited wrote: post #608

I agree with the person that says "everything Atlassian", overall it's probably not the worst, but the Confluence WYSIWYG editor has to be one of the most irritating pieces of junk I've ever used. Literally nothing it does is predictable. Similarly, whomever said Signal has a good point… it never manages to download MMSs for me (which isn't its fault, signal is bad in my house), but it alerts me anyways so I get a st…

Creating a bulleted list in Confluence is like playing Russian roulette.

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

#673

Post by bluedevil2k »

a_zaydak wrote: post #412

Windows 10 Home: Ignoring all of the typical complaints about windows like bloat wear and Cortana... I would be happy is just basic things worked. For example, I often have to switch between wireless networks for my job and the wifi icon in the bottom tray just randomly disappears about 80% of the time so I have to go through the full settings menu to get to it. Also, searching for applications or documents from the…

My issue is having my desktop connected via Ethernet and WiFi at the same time. Windows will let me do it and keep it for a few days, but lose WiFi without notifications.

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

#674

Post by userbinator »

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…

You cannot extend it or fix these issues (e.g. plugins, custom CSS styles, etc).

It's probably possible to mod it, given that it's Electron, and definitely easier than doing same to a native application, but the relative lack of configurability is certainly irritating.

The amount of RAM and CPU it uses is also ridiculous even in comparison to Slack, which was already pretty bloated.

(I wonder if any thirdparty clients have been created --- at least two exist for Slack, but I haven't looked for Teams.)

I've also been forced to use it, and have considered doing some RE and writing a Win32 native one to show MS what it should've done --- if anything I expect they should have plenty of Win32 programmers who know how to do it --- but like many others, have too many things to fix and not enough time for them...

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

#675

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

jjav wrote: post #141

gmail, by so many orders of magnitude.. Email interface designed by people who seemingly have never tried to read email. Threading is completely broken, filtering is broken, compose screen is unusable. At previous companies I've had to use gmail but was able to use a sane email client via IMAP so it was almost ok (although still somewhat broken as gmail doesn't handle IMAP correctly). At current work they disable all…

I've been using email since 1985. For me, gmail remains one of the best email experiences I've ever had. My only gripe would be the psuedo-enforcement of top-posting.

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

#677

Post by jerzyt »

dasil003 wrote: post #391
lloydatkinson wrote: post #370

Anything Atlasssian. Jira, Bitbucket, confluence. Just frustrating to use, poor UX, and slow. Business types love them however. AWS. It’s UI is honestly baffling, it feels and looks like someone made it in a rush with jQuery and Bootstrap years ago. It’s login and identity and resource management is confusing, and apparently you need a chrome extension which adds a bunch of complicated options I don’t really understa…

Disagree strongly on git. On the surface the syntax is ugly, but the data model is brilliant. Once you wrap your mind around what commits, heads and remotes are and learn to rebase you get an incredibly simple and fine-grained control. I never use stash because it's trivial to create a WIP commit and rebase later into the chunks I want to ship to permanent history. Git is like a chef's knife: extremely powerful tool…

I couldn't agree more. The fundamental design it's absolutely brilliant. The UI does take some getting used to.

I frequently use Git as an interview question, but only when the candidate lists Git among the skill set. Specifically, I ask how does Git figure out when you've renamed a file. If you don't grok it, don't list it.

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

#678

Post by KyleBerezin »

Waves MaxAudio Pro, a thousand times over. It comes preinstalled on Dell XPS laptops. It is used to control the combo audio jack, and it is used to control the speakers. Without it the speakers on windows are quiet and sounds like tin cans.

When you plug in a headset, after a 4 second pause, it pops up a dialog asking what type of device you connected. After the dialog you have another 4 seconds pause while it mounts the device. An 8 second wait while an incoming call is waiting is an eternity.

And god forbid you accidentally unplug your audio device in a call, it goes to the internal mic, and after restoring the device, MaxXAudio wont pop up the dialog until you leave the call.

It is so bad, my next laptop will not be another XPS, even though nearly everything else is great about it.

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

#679

Post by offmycloud »

anotherevan wrote: post #640
creativeembassy wrote: post #220

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…

I tried using Syncthing to backup my two kids Windows 10 laptops C:\Users\user folders to a home machine but found, it was always chewing CPU in bursts and making the fans whir. I tried adding ignores for parts we didn't care about so much and fiddling with various settings, but it was still quite problematic. Although I would prefer an open source solution, I'm looking at trying Resilio Sync next.

Windows 10 is constantly writing to the user profile directory, including the registry hives, temp/cache folders, and telemetry. Syncing the entire user profile directory turns into an never-ending battle of excludes for files, some of which exist only for seconds. Instead, only include the folders (Documents, Music, etc.) that you need to sync, and you will be much happier.
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