Ask HN: What's the worst piece of software you use everyday? • Hacker News Board

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

#941

Post by leotaku » Sun, Jul 12, 2020, 3:06 PM UTC

mroll wrote: post #802

Emacs. I'm responding to the prompt in the OP, not the title. > What's a piece of software you find essential that you wish you could replace or rewrite? Emacs is the most essential piece of software in my workflow. It's probably not the worst, but it's the one where I see the most room for improvement. I lean heavily on org-mode for tracking what I'm working on, it's like my command center. I keep two emacs frames o…

I think the only reason why I disagree with the comments here calling Git horrible and unintuitive is because Magit (Git interface for Emacs) makes it so easy to use and discoverable.

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

#942

Post by longnguyen » Sun, Jul 12, 2020, 3:10 PM UTC

nprateem wrote: post #37

Finder on Macs. I've used a Mac for over 5 years and it still amazes me how unintuitive it is for basic tasks like copying and pasting files, creating new directories, etc.

Try xtrafinder. I've been using it extensively for the last 5-6 years and it's way easier to use than the stock Finder app.

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

#943

Post by leotaku » Sun, Jul 12, 2020, 3:13 PM UTC

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…

Can't relate to the Pulseaudio comment. In 3-4 Years of using it on multiple Machines it has "surprised" me maybe once. (Because of a dock that advertised itself as an audio output despite not having speakers/headphones plugged in)

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

#944

Post by xaedes » Sun, Jul 12, 2020, 3:31 PM UTC

jimnotgym wrote: post #585

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…

I am going to go against the grain and say I rather like Teams. Video calls work really well. Voice calls are clear. Screen sharing occasionally doesn't work as some have noticed, but restarting the call seems to fix it. It is so much better than Webex though. I think it is still suffering from the teething troubles of trying to bring so many things under one umbrella, Sharepoint (which already had groups), Skype for…

So I understand what you say as: it is nice for admins to deploy and the usage issues for the users are the cost of it, but thats none of your problem because you are an admin. Well okay.

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

#945

Post by jkartchner » Sun, Jul 12, 2020, 3:54 PM UTC

runjake wrote: post #434

Whatever the OS I am using is, be it macOS, Windows, or Linux. It always feels like I'm working against the OS now that the OS philosophy has shifted to being all things to all people. If it's Windows or macOS, it wants to advertise to me, or prevent me from launching certain apps or features. If it's Linux, it's trying to shift me into some ill-thought out use pattern. This is fixable, but at a significant time cost…

This is why I don’t use DEs anymore. If you go to the trouble of automating a base install with a preferred wm, you don’t have much to configure but you have a stable and usable system straight away. Still doesn’t change the fact that Unix computing is changing a ton and can’t be fixed, but you can still get some consistency with it

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

#946

Post by vandal_at_your » Sun, Jul 12, 2020, 3:56 PM UTC

Chrome or firefox. Egregious wastes of my time, 90% inaccessible, untrusted interpreters of untrusted code.

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

#947

Post by jon-wood » Sun, Jul 12, 2020, 4:06 PM UTC

_august wrote: post #387

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…

I started using Clubhouse ( https://clubhouse.io ) for my personal projects and like it a lot for a light-weight alternative to Jira, yet more powerful than Trello. Not sure how it scales for big teams though.

Clubhouse is great for large teams, but every project manager who starts will spend their first month bitching that it isn’t Jira.

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

#948

Post by tonyedgecombe » Sun, Jul 12, 2020, 4:18 PM UTC

I remember this question being asked in the Fog Creek forums about a decade ago and the winner by far was Adobe Acrobat. It's interesting that it doesn't appear anywhere in todays responses.

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

#949

Post by filoeleven » Sun, Jul 12, 2020, 4:47 PM UTC

zxcvbn4038 wrote: post #315

Microsoft Outlook - decade after decade the icons change but the suckage does not, its 1987 every day when you use Outlook. Microsoft Teams - drains my battery 1% every two minutes Slack - the original “let’s forget everything we’ve learned about communications and try to discover it again”. From the threads feature nobody wants to the inability to silence bots or plugins, Slack never fails to disappoint. They pitch…

I would LOVE to use Outlook. I’m sure I’d love other mail clients even more; it’s just that we use Lotus Notes.

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

#950

Post by Aperocky » Sun, Jul 12, 2020, 4:54 PM UTC

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…

> AWS. It’s UI is honestly baffling

Haha I used to have the same thought before I joined. But I've since understood that AWS is a set of APIs which is the default interface and everything is able to be called programmatically - the UI only tracks the API. It's not the default mode of use nor is it meant to be.