[Banter] What is the worst software you have used for its price?

[madires]

The Acronis versions before 2012 or so were great. After that they went downhill.

[free_electron]

Anything Microsoft

microsoft does linux now too ... linux system for windows. keep that shit off my system

[free_electron]

  Apple is the least guilty, but does it too.

latest ios update. for some reason the search bar is at the bottom now    to the power of 
ios mail tool. search is all the way at the top, scroll and it disappears ... 
if phone has restarted no notifications of anything until you log in first time. then 23 popups come of missed facetimes ...

2.  No standardization of common user interface functions.  I use a variety of software for document preparation, image processing, CAD and various other purposes.  All need and provide zoom control.  But is it with the scroll wheel or the +/- buttons, or some combination of the above, a selection from a drop down menu or something else?  All need and provide pan functionality.  But is it dragging with the mouse, or the arrow keys?  Do the arrow keys move the window over the drawing, or move the drawing under the window?  These are just examples.  There are many functions common to most if not all software that are implemented in a a wide variety of ways.

same frustration here. that shit should be handled by the OS. applications should not have mouse control. all the clicks , moves, gestures should be under control of the OS. one control panel to let you assign what operation to what button / move. so all applications works the same.
And it's different between os's. scrollwheel behavior on apple is opposite from windows

[free_electron]

Paintshop pro after it was borged by Corel. Installer became crap , spyware , bloatware , now totally unusable. Same happened to Microfx Designer. Corel borged it and ran it into ground.

[bd139]

  Apple is the least guilty, but does it too.

latest ios update. for some reason the search bar is at the bottom now    to the power of 
ios mail tool. search is all the way at the top, scroll and it disappears ... 
if phone has restarted no notifications of anything until you log in first time. then 23 popups come of missed facetimes ...

2.  No standardization of common user interface functions.  I use a variety of software for document preparation, image processing, CAD and various other purposes.  All need and provide zoom control.  But is it with the scroll wheel or the +/- buttons, or some combination of the above, a selection from a drop down menu or something else?  All need and provide pan functionality.  But is it dragging with the mouse, or the arrow keys?  Do the arrow keys move the window over the drawing, or move the drawing under the window?  These are just examples.  There are many functions common to most if not all software that are implemented in a a wide variety of ways.

same frustration here. that shit should be handled by the OS. applications should not have mouse control. all the clicks , moves, gestures should be under control of the OS. one control panel to let you assign what operation to what button / move. so all applications works the same.
And it's different between os's. scrollwheel behavior on apple is opposite from windows

For ref you can put the address bar back at the top in the settings.

As for the scroll direction, you can also configure that. I have a Logitech MX master 3 which has a utility that allows it to use the opposite scroll direction to the system settings which is handy.

The most consistent OS I have seen though is macOS. It’s pretty good.

[AndyBeez]

Anyone remember IBM's OS2 Warp? I once saw the OS demonstrated at a business expo by an inspirational IBM evangelist. And then many years later, at a retro computer fair running on a 386 PC, demonstrated by a guy in a Star Trek uniform. OS2 Warp, it was a yuppie thing: https://www.howtogeek.com/688970/what-was-ibms-os2-and-why-did-it-matter/

[Jester]

Another vote for PADS.

[NiHaoMike]

DRM would probably be the worst software concept to be invented. The end users don't want it, the content producer thinks it benefits them, the pirates get a market for the pirated content.

[nigelwright7557]

Windows all versions.

They seem to bring out something that isnt good then improve.
Then bring out a new version which has gone backwards then start to improve it again.

All the different technologies that go with Windows like winforms, WPF, .net  etc.
WPF has the slowest screen redraws ever even on a fast PC.
.net core was a big improvement but wont run on old Windows.

I use Visual Studio for websites.
After an update it stopped allowing you to select files to upload to the website, you had to upload the lot !
Three times I got them to fix it and twice they at next update removed it again !
Absolutely useless.

[nigelwright7557]

I have to vote some software I wrote myself as worst.
It is PCBCAD51.
Basically it works ok but has very small libraries meaning you have to input your own schematic and pcb footprints which is tedious to say the least.
I added component wizards which improved things a bit but its still tedious reading data sheets to get pin spacings etc. and prone to errors.

[MK14]

DRM would probably be the worst software concept to be invented. The end users don't want it, the content producer thinks it benefits them, the pirates get a market for the pirated content.

The following video, seems to detail some/one of those sad, DRM (for a CD) things:

[rsjsouza]

The Acronis versions before 2012 or so were great. After that they went downhill.

As for backup solutions, the Connected Backup is a complete P.O.S. that passed many hands since its original owner Iron Mountain. Now it is owned by a company named "micro focus" (one more MBA-concocted meaningless name) and support is non-existent.

[m98]

No mention of LabView yet? I almost always get the urge to stab my eyes out once I have to debug some vi's which could also double as full-page microfiche maps of the forbidden temple.

[free_electron]

For ref you can put the address bar back at the top in the settings.

i know. but why on earth change it after what ? 10 years ? somebody was bored and had nothing to do ? let me move the search bar . that'll create a stink...

As for the scroll direction, you can also configure that. I have a Logitech MX master 3 which has a utility that allows it to use the opposite scroll direction to the system settings which is handy.

i know. but programs can still override it !

I have two macs and several ios devices. For anything electronics i use a windows machine. for day to day surfing , banking , word , excel etc all mac.

[free_electron]

LabView

i can't even type that without throwing up. so i had to wait for someone to post so i could hit "reply"

That thing should have its installer media and manuals sent through a shredder, doused in gasoline, set on fire , the ashes put in an asbestos lined lead container. that container stored in a titanium housing  and that housing entombed in a cubic metre of reinforced concrete. Bury that block in an old , deep mine , backfill it and collapse the entrance. plant a forest on top of that.

I loved going to their demo shows and turning on the SRQ ability of some connected equipment and watch it come crashing down. they never figured out how to properly handle a GPIB SRQ.

I did something similar at lecroy booths. take the timebase knob, spin it fast left, fast right, fast left and repeat that like 10 times. Then walk away while the scope goes nuts zooming in and out and displaying that dreaded "triggering..." with the slowly crawling progress bar at the bottom. It was fun on their DDA running win2K. many would bluescreen after several minutes.

[Messtechniker]

The Acronis versions before 2012 or so were great. After that they went downhill.

Und sowas von....

Agree. After dicking around with a few alternatives moved on to (paid) Macrium Reflect.

[bd139]

I gave up on windows backup and imaging software years ago. I was just running Beyond Compare against a backup disk on data only. The rest of the OS would just get hosed if I needed to do a restore.

Oh another backup turd for the list: Veeam. DC backup software. Just eats your SDN throughput, costs lots of money and doesn’t even work properly.

[Nominal Animal]

I did something similar at lecroy booths. take the timebase knob, spin it fast left, fast right, fast left and repeat that like 10 times. Then walk away while the scope goes nuts zooming in and out and displaying that dreaded "triggering..." with the slowly crawling progress bar at the bottom.

Ah, the good ol' "let's do computation in the UI event handler" antipattern.  Causes the events to be queued, slowing down everything. Drives me crazy.

The correct solution is simple: you split the display update into a separate mechanism.  On the web, you use window.setTimeout().  On widget toolkits, you use an idle handler.  For best results, update the numeric values showing the state, but postpone recalculating and redrawing the display until the UI event queue is empty.  That way, you twirl the buttons and only the numbers change immediately; it'll take that 0.1s or so of inactivity for the entire display to be recalculated and redrawn.  During long computation, if there are new UI events in the queue, drop and restart the computation, unless it has been say twice the maximum duration of a full calculation.  That way you always get a display update in bounded time, with the latest settings, even when twirling the button, but no event queueing beyond that, no matter what happens.

This is not new, and was well known and common in the 8-bit era already, especially games.  It saddens me to hear that even LeCroy fell into this easily avoided UI trap...

[Messtechniker]

Oh another backup turd for the list: Veeam. DC backup software. Just eats your SDN throughput, costs lots of money and doesn’t even work properly.

Agree. Did work mostly, except on some puters where I experienced unsolvable .Net probs.

[nctnico]

I did something similar at lecroy booths. take the timebase knob, spin it fast left, fast right, fast left and repeat that like 10 times. Then walk away while the scope goes nuts zooming in and out and displaying that dreaded "triggering..." with the slowly crawling progress bar at the bottom.

Ah, the good ol' "let's do computation in the UI event handler" antipattern.  Causes the events to be queued, slowing down everything. Drives me crazy.

This is not new, and was well known and common in the 8-bit era already, especially games.  It saddens me to hear that even LeCroy fell into this easily avoided UI trap...

The problem is most likely much deeper and may even be intentional. What I have seen on Windows based equipment from several brands is that the CPU load is low even when the equipment is doing heavy processing tasks (like math or analysis). It looks more like they are trying to keep the CPU cool on purpose. The slow UI response can also be a hold-off mechanism.

[bd139]

I don’t think it’s that. It’s just we have multi core machines and single core programmers.

I tend to buy the fastest single core machine on the market where I can because of this. This is currently an M1 Pro for me as that’s the only package that doesn’t burn 150 watts.

[tom66]

I'll throw an FPGA one in - I'm not a big fan of Microsemi (now Microchip) Libero.  The software has a very old synthesis and place-and-route engine and doesn't appear to support multi threading.

I can complete a 30k LUT design in Vivado in about 12 minutes on my Ryzen laptop, as it will use all 8 cores for parts of the PnR and 2 cores for much of the synthesis process.  OOC stuff also uses all available threads.   Meanwhile Libero will do a single thread throughout the build and will take over 60 minutes for an equivalent design.

A "Gold" licence of the Libero software is quite expensive for what you get (essential for building most designs), especially as Xilinx's Vivado WebPACK is free and lets you build for most sub-$200 FPGAs they sell. 

I won't sing the praises of Vivado - it's not fantastic by any means - but it could be a lot worse.

[dmills]

I will see you the crapness that is PADS and raise you to the stratospheric heights of awfulness that is <Drumroll> DxDesigner!

Ghod what a pile of fetid dingoes kidneys, it is like they spent 20 minutes with an EE talking about schematic design tools, then filtered the result thru the CEOs son who was interning that month before handing the result to a bunch of coding 'bootcamp' graduates, and applying a QA process consisting of "Does it Compile? Does it Link? Then ship it already. It really is THAT useless.

I should add an honourable mention for using FlexLM for licensing, possibly the least user friendly license manager ever invented.

[Codemonkey]

PADS

PCad (most unhelpful library editor known to man and the PCB layout editor has no simple way of turning on or off layer visibility).

Not used it myself, but we have a number of licenses for EPlan for wiring loom drawings. Apparently it was dreadful, buggy and the support was crap so we just stopped using it despite it costing loads.

[free_electron]

I will see you the crapness that is PADS and raise you to the stratospheric heights of awfulness that is <Drumroll> DxDesigner!

Ghod what a pile of fetid dingoes kidneys, it is like they spent 20 minutes with an EE talking about schematic design tools,

you should see the replacement for Cadence schematic capture now that they have ditched the orcad leftovers . it's stuck in 1984