Ask HN: What software are you forced to use that you hate?
For me it's Rally (nee CA Agile Centra). It's dog slow, it has an interface cluttered with a million fields that we never use anymore (if we ever used them in the first place), but management loves it because they can generate a bunch of different reports from.
What's yours?
51 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 97.7 ms ] thread* Windows ==> macOS
* Jira ==> Trello
* Stash/Bitbucket ==> GitHub
* MS Office ==> Google Drive
* Box ==> Dropbox
* Outlook ==> Gmail
* Skype for Business ==> no chat system
In almost all of these cases, one person (or small group of people) made the purchasing decision for many more people. Likely this was based on price, not utility.
I consider myself lucky that I never have to use Internet Explorer ever. Some people have to use it every day.
Currently we use Confluence for documentation, which, like many other Atlassian products, is lacking notable features compared to cheaper competitors. Other than that, we're great: Exchange, Slack, Github (including issues), etc
Google for Business or w/e would be great, but there is no way a company this size is gonna do that.
The lesson, I think, isn't that corporations are dumb - it's that compatability has substantial value.
Hibernate
maven
KDB+ (but now I love it)
What changed ?
When I went looking into it further, the language was so clean. The concepts so simple and clear. My first programming language was Scheme so it was almost like sitting down in CS61A again and learning to program from simple constructs.
And the amount of data I could pump though was incredible.
There were a lot of hump and ideas I had to get over. This workspace idea it had (back in K2). Strange trigger and dependency system that a GUI was even built on. But I did get over them, and really enjoyed them. I even used some of the trigger/dependency ideas for a risk management system I worked on.
It is still my favorite database. One day, just so I can say I did, I'll work at Kx for a little while if Arthur lets me :)
But that's agency management software. Orbiting categories like project management, kanban, communication and time-tracking have many good options but integrating them in a way that can "check off all the boxes" enough to satisfy risk-averse partners and controllers is difficult.
Ironically, I also hate using an office suite that is not MS Office 2003, including MS and non-MS products.
Jira. I just hate it. I despise it. What makes matters worse is my manager is a Jira fanatic. I think he is obsessed with it. One needs to shift in his seat "create a bloody Jira ticket". I, and many others, suggested simple ways to do things or even many GTDs. Many others teams use Trello and other tools but he has to use Jira.
Google Docs. Yeah, I don't like it either. Mostly how it's overused and abused.
Okta based login system. Logs me out every 30 minutes even though I choose to be remembered.
Intelliji or Webstorm or Android Studio. They are just bulky. I tried using other setups but since everybody else uses them it's difficult. (not forced to use these though).
Ewon (industrial remote VPN)
Atmel studio
Angular 1
Quickbooks
Eagle (PCB design)
Confluence
Onsip (all others I have used are bad also)
Bitbucket has native LGTMs (approves) without having to click the "Files" tab, the "Review" button, the "approve" radio option, then "Okay".
So much fail piled on top of each other.
I'm quite liking KiCAD for personal projects these days. Feels like the good parts of Cadence (unix-y, super scriptable) without the cruft and bizarre UX. Sadly it's not nearly powerful enough for 'real' work. Also still a tad buggy, in true open-source fashion :).
Citrix --> any native app
- Windows10 : Ubuntu/Arch
- Outlook : Gmail
- Eclipse : Jetbrains
- Skype : Slack
- EXTjs : Vue
- SVN : Git
- Jira : ANYTHING ELSE!