World's Worst Software

ddrueding

ddrueding

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Joined
Feb 4, 2002
Messages
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Horsens, Denmark
Might as well start a list.

Requirements:

1. Must be very common (lots of people effected)
2. Must be bad at what it was designed to do (AV that doesn't, etc)
3. Must be misunderstood (users should have the impression that it's good)
4. Must effect the computers general operation (running at machine startup is almost required)
5. Cannot actually be nothing but a Virus/Malware (must attempt to actually do something useful)
 
BEA Weblogic Workshop version 10.0 is actually the worst piece of software I have ever used. It's an IDE based on Eclipse with a bunch of BEA written plug-ins. I have never used a piece of software that crashed as often, was as slow, or as unfriendly. Simply awful. Iterative development also causes it to run out of memory after about 6-8 code changes. The vendor's only response to fix the problems was to upgrade to the next version that came out around 4 months later. However, this required all the applications be upgraded to support the new version, which was and is quite a large undertaking.
 
timwhit said:
BEA Weblogic Workshop version 10.0 is actually the worst piece of software I have ever used. It's an IDE based on Eclipse with a bunch of BEA written plug-ins. I have never used a piece of software that crashed as often, was as slow, or as unfriendly. Simply awful. Iterative development also causes it to run out of memory after about 6-8 code changes. The vendor's only response to fix the problems was to upgrade to the next version that came out around 4 months later. However, this required all the applications be upgraded to support the new version, which was and is quite a large undertaking.
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It sounds like a piece of crap, but it doesn't affect the rest of the system, and because of that it is clear which software is at fault. The number of people who are amazed when I blame McAfee for making their computer slow is near 100%. They know that their computer is slow, but they didn't know why.


Realplayer and Quicktime are great examples.
 
ddrueding said:
It sounds like a piece of crap, but it doesn't affect the rest of the system, and because of that it is clear which software is at fault. The number of people who are amazed when I blame McAfee for making their computer slow is near 100%. They know that their computer is slow, but they didn't know why.


Realplayer and Quicktime are great examples.
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It doesn't fit into most of your buckets, but I needed somewhere to complain about it. Amazingly enough the next version they released fixed most of the problems. I love being a beta tester for enterprise-level software that costs 10s of thousands of dollars a year.
 
Of course, to make this productive and useful, we should include why the program is bad, and what alternatives are available. Then we might be able to compile a document of some kind.
 
Flash without a doubt takes the cake. It may fail your second criteria sometimes, but I say it's still bad doing what it's designed to do because animated .gifs and scripting can be made to do practically the same thing. Now that I've been on broadband for a few years I've almost forgotten how Flash heavy web pages load really sloooooooowly, but they were definitely intolerable on dial-up. Basically Flash is a bloated, proprietary way to do what can be done via other methods. Another thing I hate about Flash is you can't do anything with it. You can't select text or images for saving, for example.
 
I have to disagree that animated gifs with scripting can do much the same as flash, that is a bit of a stretch. A gif animation is a rasterized image consuming more space and bandwidth than a flash-based vector animation will and will likely not look as clean or run as smooth.

I'm not disagreeing that flash can be heavy, bloated, unreliable, or annoying because you need a plugin, but it can do a lot more (with the right person) than a gif with scripting. I do prefer the flash-based video players compared to using something like quicktime or media player imbedded in a page. Those bother me way more than flash does.

ps, I also dislike you can't do anything with the content (copy/paste)...
 
Handruin said:
I have to disagree that animated gifs with scripting can do much the same as flash, that is a bit of a stretch. A gif animation is a rasterized image consuming more space and bandwidth than a flash-based vector animation will and will likely not look as clean or run as smooth.

I'm not disagreeing that flash can be heavy, bloated, unreliable, or annoying because you need a plugin, but it can do a lot more (with the right person) than a gif with scripting. I do prefer the flash-based video players compared to using something like quicktime or media player imbedded in a page. Those bother me way more than flash does.

ps, I also dislike you can't do anything with the content (copy/paste)...
Click to expand...

javascript...blows the worst, most invasive, PITA, hackers choice for infecting malware, piece of crappy software there is.

webpages that spam you like crazy with pop-up adds that get around ad blocking in your browser. I was looking up a Brazilian model, trying to get more pics of her, got to one of those 'babe' gallery sites, with the adult content, and I couldn't close all the god damned popup pr0n site ads that were coming at me, attaching like Cylons, lol. Had to quit my browser to stop that shit, as the windows were popping up 2+ per second, couldn't close them fast enough!

Flash is 3rd.

Quicktime ebbeded vids rule- Flash sucks big time, massive bloatware even in on slower broadband, causes memory leaks in Camino (Mac derivative of FF) that require a full restart to get back all the RAM it sucks up and won't release...least not enough upon quitting the browser.

iTunes rocks, billions of satisfied customers, gazillions of iPhone owners agree (bit of exaggeration, but the iPhone is selling well beyond all predictions, even the most optimistic just a year ago)...get a Mac :D.
 
udaman said:
javascript...blows the worst, most invasive, PITA, hackers choice for infecting malware, piece of crappy software there is.

webpages that spam you like crazy with pop-up adds that get around ad blocking in your browser. I was looking up a Brazilian model, trying to get more pics of her, got to one of those 'babe' gallery sites, with the adult content, and I couldn't close all the god damned popup pr0n site ads that were coming at me, attaching like Cylons, lol. Had to quit my browser to stop that shit, as the windows were popping up 2+ per second, couldn't close them fast enough!
Click to expand...
Run noscript and avoid those problems. :rolleyes:
 
Photoshop. Top ten with a bullet.

1. Must be very common (lots of people effected) tick
2. Must be bad at what it was designed to do (AV that doesn't, etc) tick
3. Must be misunderstood (users should have the impression that it's good) tick
4. Must effect the computers general operation (running at machine startup is almost required) tick
5. Cannot actually be nothing but a Virus/Malware (must attempt to actually do something useful) tick

Footnotes:

On item (2) yes, Photoslug does actually edit images, and the final result can be very good indeed - but given (a) the incredibly bad user interface, making it impossible for the non-expert to achieve anything of worth in any reasonable timeframe, and (b) the incredibly poor performance, we can tick this box with confidence.

On item (4), yes again. When running, it sucks resources like there is no tommorow. It's not a system start-up hog in the clasic mould, but it is in some ways worse than that. Because it takes such an incredibly long time to load, you are forced to open it and then leave it open, because you cannot sensibly close it anytime you are not using it for a short while, as the next time you need it you will have to endure the dreadful start-up time again. As the final insult, you can't flick-start the lengthy start-up process and carry on doing some other useful task while you are waiting for it, because it grabs the system focus repeatedly, meaning that during that interminable period, you can't use Photoslug, and you can't use anything else either!

Did anyone mention Vista yet? Yes, well that one is covered then. Good. But Photoslug bothers me more than Vista. At least with Vista you can use XP instead. Between them, Adobe and Corel have seen to it that you have no alternative to using Photoslug.
 
When my computer is back up, I'll have to post a video of Photoshop opening to show how painless it can be (even with extra plug-ins). You just need a system that draws 400W+ at idle and costs as much as a 1Ds MkIII and a 400/2.8 combined.
 
Don't know if I agree with Photoshop. It's currently the fastest and most stable photo editor I have. You should try Fuji FinePix Studio while adjusting S5 Pro RAF files and Nikon Capture NX 2 (made by Nik Software) with selective NR and multiple adjustment layers.

Olympus Studio 2 is not fun either, although it's not quite as bad as Fuji and Nikon's RAW editors.

Although to Nikon's credit, Capture NX actually does some heavy duty local editing with virtual layers and masks, whereas FinePix Studio and Oly Studio only make global adjustments.

If you get to know Photoshop, it can actually become decently easy and fast to use. Once you get your actions set up, it's a matter of a couple mouse clicks to play a series of actions, and then you've just done a few dozen editing steps in 30 seconds. You can also batch apply actions to entire folders, so any global adjustments can be taken care of with a couple mouse clicks.

Even before you import your image into Photoshop, you can already take care of a lot of global editing in ACR by saving settings or profiles. And again, a couple mouse clicks and you've adjusted a couple dozen settings and can apply it to batches of files.

It is also very useful for getting more exposure latitude out of your files and dealing with very contrasty scenes where it seems like your shadows are crushed and your highlights clipped. Pull back those highlights in ACR and develop a couple exposures from a single RAW file. Load the TIFFs as separate layers, put the darker image layer on top, select the entire layer and hit copy, add a layer mask, alt-click the mask, paste the image into its own layer mask, and invert it. Voila. Instant shadow mask that works better than any of those shadow optimizer, D-lighting, or dynamic range optimizer features. Takes about 2-3 minutes to do from start to end, or much less with actions.
 
1. JavaScript
I hate JavaScript too, but I've usually been able to control the pop-ups either with IE extended functionality shells or using other browsers and extensions (currently use Firefox with NoScript). The part of JavaScript I hate is how many CPU cycles it takes and how often there's some kind of infinite loop, buffer overflow, or memory leak.

2. Anything from Apple. QuickTime, iTunes, you name it.

3. Most things from Adobe. Flash and Acrobat especially as they're so common these days. Photoshop could be better, but it's still a lot better than a lot of the alternatives out there (especially for RAW, layers, and local editing).

4. Haven't used any Symantec or McAfee "protection" utility at home for a long time, so I don't know. We have McAfee at work, but it is tolerable and the system is generally slow anyways, so it's not a main cause of the slowness.

5. Vista did noticeably slow down my PC, but it also happens to be the most stable OS on my system. A stable system is infinitely faster than a system that is rebooting from a crash.
 
e_dawg said:
If you get to know Photoshop, it can actually become decently easy .... get your actions set up ....
Click to expand...

Gahhh. Pull the other paw. I've heard better special pleading in drink-drive cases. You mean once you spend a couple of years learning what ought to be intuitive and not too far off instant, it becomes tolerable after you essentially re-write the thing by writing your own actions to make up for the pox-ridden 1991 job that Adobe made of the out-of-the-box interface version.

As for claiming that it can be "decently fast to use", which planet do you keep your stopwatch on? I simply can't believe that an otherwise intelligent person would say that! It's a slug on a Valium overdose. Any program that takes more than one to two seconds to start up and do nothing with a clean install on a modern system is incompetent. No other word for it.

e_dawg said:
You should try ...
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You mean "I admit it, Your Worship, but you should have seen the other bloke in the other car, he was really drunk".

Slow is slow, inexcusable is inexcusable, and Photoslug is both. Outside of Vista, I'd struggle to think of a program I despise more. Possibly the now-defunct Kodak Easy-crash circa 2002, but that one is history now. Or Mcafee maybe, but then there is no reason why any sensible, well-informed person would ever install Mcafee on a personal computer, and it's easy enough to uninstall cleanly so long as you don't mind reformating your hard drive, where Photoslug (damn it!) is an essential.
 
Has anyone tried to install Adobe Acrobat Reader on a new Firefox install lately? It is impressively bad. There is a Firefox add-in that is just the download manager for the program, and if you don't uncheck a box, you get an e-bay toolbar for your trouble.

Edit: And it requires a restart...amazing!
 
Ever since I discovered Foxit, I haven't gone near Acrobloat. This present machine is lots faster than my old one. You may believe it's because of the dual core CPU and extra RAM if you wish, but I know it's all because it's never been sullied by the dreaded Acrobloat.
 
I like Foxit, too. But too many pages were coming up wrong. The last specific ones I can cite are the Visa application forms for Russia, and the passport renewal forms for the US. Those are ones I had to get right.
 
ddrueding said:
Flash is a tool, a very powerful tool. It is highly misused, as most powerful tools are.

The software implementation does have its issues.
Click to expand...

Very high CPU usage on video playback. I still prefer it to embedded RealPlayer, Quicktime or Windows Media Player though.

Though, it's pretty easy to block flash if you don't want to see it. So, it doesn't bother me very much. One click if I do want to see it.
 
ddrueding said:
I like Foxit, too. But too many pages were coming up wrong. The last specific ones I can cite are the Visa application forms for Russia, and the passport renewal forms for the US. Those are ones I had to get right.
Click to expand...


I was having this problem with Foxit as well. I used the in application update procedure to update to v2.3 and problems went away. I suspect Adobe has been playing around with their formats... Competition is bad M'kay...
 
ddrueding said:
Flash is a tool, a very powerful tool. It is highly misused, as most powerful tools are.

The software implementation does have its issues.
Click to expand...

The internet should not be one of those misuses. Videos and all that useless sh*t flying around are frequently disgusting. I avoid flash-based web sites and do not buy their products if possible.
 
Usually I just hit Crtl-Alt-Del. ;) I'm too old to have an interest in changing the world.
 
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