[Banter] What is the worst software you have used for its price? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: RedLion
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: May 19, 2022, 12:31:54 pm
content: We all have a software that we like to hate. What is yours?At my new job, we use Mentor Xpedition for PCB design, which I am told costs cool 6 figures on the free market, and the user interface is absolutely horrifying. I am genuinely baffled at just how bad it is, coming from an Altium background, which is less than 10% of the price! (granted that UI is not perfect either)I wonder how you arrive at the decision to buy such an expensive piece of bloatware that looks and feels like it was designed by some hobbyist for DOS, it is dog slow and clunky, and if you want to, say, turn your schematic into a PCB, you have to openanother program, which is even slower, and has an even worse UI.I mean, if freeware is a bit crap, you deal with it, because it's free, but why is anyone spending that much money on that bad of a software?

author: jogri
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 19, 2022, 12:53:29 pm
content: Probably Keithleys KickStart software, they charge over 1.000 € for it and it's actually hilarious how bad that software is: They sell dataloggers for 2-5k, but the software (that you have to buy extra) can't even take a measurement every second without drifting like crazy. You can only specify the amount of time between measurements, but the time it takes to take a measurement randomly fluctuates by like 10-20 milliseconds. If you want to take a measurement every second you have to specify a delay of ~850 ms between measurements since a single measurement takes roughly 150 ms and then fine tune that delay and just pray that the timing works out somehow (it will not).The 20 year old free HP software on the other hand is perfect: You just tell it that you want a measurement every second and it times it perfectly down to a fraction of a ms.

author: RedLion
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: May 19, 2022, 12:58:24 pm
content: Quote from: jogri on May 19, 2022, 12:53:29 pmWow, that sounds like it runs on bootlegged LabView

author: VK3DRB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 19, 2022, 01:19:11 pm
content: iTunes. Even being free, it is way overpriced.

author: KaneTW
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 19, 2022, 01:53:03 pm
content: Quote from: RedLion on May 19, 2022, 12:31:54 pmThe user interface is a relic of the past, as with a lot of software. The main strength of Xpedition lies in its rules engine, simulation capabilities, and team support.I work on pretty high speed designs. As I work alone, Altium is my preferred choice because there's just too much auxillary work to be done in Xpedition. But all the vendors expect Xpedition/Cadence/Zuken and sometimes you run into things that Altium's rules engine doesn't support well and it's annoying.

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 19, 2022, 02:41:55 pm
content: Mentor Graphics PADS.It crashes, freezes, introduces catastrophic errors into gerbers, and lacks many modern design tools (proper 'tagged' DRC, impedance and length-matched routing, net-class design rules, proper 3D modelling etc.), yet is still widely used in the electronics industry.I hate it so very much. It costs several thousand pounds a seat and yet KiCAD is clearly superior in nearly every way. We're probably going to go the way of Altium though, cost wise it's a bit more, but it's not worth the saving to use something like PADS, given how much of a time sink it is.Also, the name particularly sucks, as try to Google anything like "PADS how to change track width" and tons of unrelated articles about PCB design come up because "pads" are common on PCB designs. This would be a minor issue but for the fact that the internal help program is even more useless than the software itself.I'm pretty sure it was written for a Commodore 64 and all that's changed since then is a vague port to Windows.

author: tszaboo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 19, 2022, 03:14:57 pm
content: orcad

author: ajb
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 19, 2022, 03:55:04 pm
content: Wow, I came here to say Altium. I haven't dabbled in the others, but my impression has been that they all tend to have a worse user experience or are missing a lot of the graphical control options that Altium has (even if most of what Altium has is half-baked and half-broken), which is part of what has me still putting up with it.

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 19, 2022, 04:10:00 pm
content: Objectel, really expensive (especially the mods) and cumbersome to use (an understatement).

author: Benta
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 19, 2022, 06:37:15 pm
content: M$ Windows. All versions.

author: Gregg
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 19, 2022, 07:57:00 pm
content: SAP accounting programOver bloated and ridiculous; it would take a full day to do what should have taken 15 minutes

author: YurkshireLad
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 19, 2022, 08:07:58 pm
content: IBM Jazz....

author: Slh
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: May 19, 2022, 09:11:28 pm
content: IBM DOORS. It's a horrible program made even worse by the license server that kicks you out if you lose the network for 30 seconds (usually by undocking your laptop...). It's also the price of a decent car.

author: YurkshireLad
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 19, 2022, 10:17:38 pm
content: Quote from: Slh on May 19, 2022, 09:11:28 pmOh God, I completely forgot about Doors, Clearcase and Clearquest!!

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 19, 2022, 10:22:44 pm
content: HP / CoCreate WorkManager. See:http://www-eng.lbl.gov/~als/WorkManager/Training_Materials/Intro_to_WM/There are still open sores of this in the descendent product: Creo Elements / DMM.It was like lord Cthulhu had intimate relations with a demon and given birth to something even more heinous which had written it. It was so good that I actually wrote a complete new UI for the back end Oracle database and it improved their life so much that they actually shed tears. Usually it's because I ruined their lives or made them unemployed but nope, this was tears of joy.Oh and Powershell.

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 19, 2022, 10:30:37 pm
content: Quote from: VK3DRB on May 19, 2022, 01:19:11 pmI quite liked iTunes back around 2005, then they completely ruined it over the next decade or so, worse with every version.

author: tszaboo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 19, 2022, 10:31:26 pm
content: Quote from: Gregg on May 19, 2022, 07:57:00 pmActually, true. Although I have no idea how much actually SAP costs, but guessing a lot, since they send consultants to set up the software constantly.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 19, 2022, 10:59:49 pm
content: Quote from: james_s on May 19, 2022, 10:30:37 pmIt actually doesn't exist on the Mac now. Only windows users have to suffer itMac users have Apple Music which is, well 90% less buggy.

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 19, 2022, 11:07:41 pm
content: All the Linux flavors and the whole ecosystem around it. fork fork fork , but never fix the root issues. There 315 different versions all with different user interface, different ways to install applications , different package managers. install one thing , break another .I'm not talking open source in general. there are good open source programs. Inkscape comes to mind.

author: Gerhard_dk4xp
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 19, 2022, 11:47:16 pm
content: HP Pascal for the 8085 / Z80.I wrote a program to sweep the beam of an ultrasonics phase arrayand control it via GPIB/488 in Turbo Pascal. So far, so good. Really good.I expected a day to compile it on the HP16000 mini computer within-circuit emulator. That turned out to be 4 weeks. We must have beenthe (paying) alpha tester and 1st. customer ever.It was unable to parse legal standard Pascal source and generated wrongcode for the rest. In effect, I re-wrote my program in assembler.BTW, happy user of Linux Mint here. RedHat was nice, too.We ran a system of >10 million lines of source code on it, a mixof many languages.

author: eugene
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 19, 2022, 11:52:09 pm
content: I don't know what the worst program is, but I'll bet it requires a subscription license.

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 20, 2022, 01:09:38 am
content: ooh. i got another one. LabWindows on Solaris.Install it. make small program that contains endless loop.how do we stop it ? consult manual . hit ctrl-alt-delete ... the manual provided was for the windows version... there was no manual for the sun version ... oopsie.. so what now ?find the process id. kill ..... doesn't work ... kill -9 ... doesn't work.. call tech support .... "uh, we don't know . Very few people use the Solaris version, we have no experience with this. Can't you just power cycle the machine ?" (The machine was in the middle of some simulations that had been running for a while...)i will never forget the sysadmins look on his face, just as i will never forget what happens to a CD-ROM when you fold it in half. Broken cd-rom , ripped apart manual went back to national instruments with an accompanying letter containing very colorful verbage and threats of inserting said broken CD into the back orifice of whoever wrote the thing and the statement : keep that shit out of my computer room !

author: Bud
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 20, 2022, 05:08:27 am
content: Linux.

author: Messtechniker
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 20, 2022, 05:33:16 am
content: Keysight Benchvue. Much to convoluted.Too many background tasks slowing things down.Can't say much about the UI, because I quicklyun-installed this huge thing, to put it politely.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 20, 2022, 06:21:14 am
content: Quote from: Bud on May 20, 2022, 05:08:27 amParticularly the boot process and desktop.

author: daqq
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 20, 2022, 06:26:09 am
content: Microsoft Office, Excel especially. I mean... wow... I recently had to start using it again and... oh dear lord... Single undo stack when multiple sheets are opened, can't have multiple sheets with the same name opened at once, the CSV import simply does not work properly, putting any decent amount of data into a graph will explode the bloody thing*. Microsoft Word somehow manages to lag* on a document with four pages and one picture, but at least the bloody thing is synced with the cloud. Microsoft Teams does the same thing as a host of other programs, but somehow manages to have a 500 MB footprint in the RAM and when you have a call your computer tries to fly away with all the fan activity.* - on a PC with 16 GB of RAM, i7 processor, very decent recent machine that has no problem with other intensive tasks

author: david77
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 20, 2022, 07:14:27 am
content: Lotus Notes. What a pile of garbage. I don't understand how they ever managed to sell that heap of manure to any corporate customers.Oh, and SAP. In Germany we call it "Sanduhr Anschau Programm" - "Application for watching the hourglass".

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 20, 2022, 08:36:46 am
content: Quote from: Bud on May 20, 2022, 05:08:27 amFor the price of zero you get what you pay for.

author: Daixiwen
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 20, 2022, 09:40:09 am
content: Quote from: RedLion on May 19, 2022, 12:31:54 pmThat's funny, the first thing I thought about when I saw the thread title was Xpedition

author: wraper
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 20, 2022, 09:56:31 am
content: Quote from: daqq on May 20, 2022, 06:26:09 amMicrosoft office often lags when used with mouse which has high polling rate, like 333Hz+ and becomes abysmal with 1000Hz. Also IIRC also has a similar issue when monitor has a high refresh rate.

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 20, 2022, 06:02:46 pm
content: Quote from: tom66 on May 20, 2022, 08:36:46 amif i count the hours i wasted on that stuff . they owe me a couple of billion dollars.

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 20, 2022, 06:04:01 pm
content: Quote from: Daixiwen on May 20, 2022, 09:40:09 amit's either tormentor or crapdance

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 20, 2022, 07:26:15 pm
content: Quote from: free_electron on May 20, 2022, 06:02:46 pmI was getting paid a lot of money to waste my time on that stuff

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 20, 2022, 07:36:50 pm
content: Quote from: bd139 on May 20, 2022, 07:26:15 pmI paid for getting proper in-depth training on how to install & operate Linux and made money using that knowledge ever since. The money I paid for learning about Linux was well spend.Just dicking around gets you nowhere.

author: MK14
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 20, 2022, 07:38:39 pm
content: Windows 98Blue Screen Of Death.Does Bill Gates agree with me?Watch to find out.

author: Refrigerator
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 20, 2022, 08:24:28 pm
content: Quote from: MK14 on May 20, 2022, 07:38:39 pmWin98 is terrible. I had the misfortune of experiencing it courtesy of some old program i had to run, which was built for Win95.(but it didn't work on win95)Fortunately Windows milenium edition worked out, and it was quite nice to use actually.

author: aduinstat
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: May 20, 2022, 08:55:59 pm
content: AutoCAD. It crashes at least once a day.

author: cdev
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 20, 2022, 09:02:16 pm
content: What do you hate about them? I like having a text boot process.I use it all the time and nIve found its been improving in reliability during all the 25 years or so I have been using it.The desktop could be better for sure..Quote from: bd139 on May 20, 2022, 06:21:14 am

author: AndyBeez
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 20, 2022, 09:20:26 pm
content: I would have to include:Windows 3.1,95,98 - Nice try, but we were wanting the XP experience.Windows Me,2000,7,8 - Nice try, but we were wanting XP experience.Microsoft Office's Access database - The ODBC connector wassosecure. NOTFirefox - Not the original, but after it was updated-updated-updated-updatedPremier video suite - Not one computer in the world had the RAM or CPU to run thisPhotoshop - why do people have to get somoistabout this bloat turd?Internet Explorer all versions - Just go and burn in software hell with the entire Seatle developer team!Microsoft Edge - Now go and join Internet Explorer

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 20, 2022, 09:31:25 pm
content: Quote from: cdev on May 20, 2022, 09:02:16 pmWell it's not the text boot process that's the problem. It's the chain of chaos that occurs when it's booting. This is all fine until something goes wonky. Fortunately I only deal with Linux nodes in the cloud these days where resolution involves just nuking the EC2 instance and another one magically appears, but it's a real pain in the old days when you're trying to fix a broken ass mdraid or hosed boot via an ILO or actually have to drive somewhere to unflunk it on a console while systemd (infrastructure level mr clippy levels of insanity) tries to teabag you at the same time. Boot process roughly goes:EFI -> Grub2 -> three USB monkeys materialise holding a banana in the kernel -> one monkey inserts the banana up its ass -> other monkey looks at it in disgust -> third monkey tuts -> small fight ensues -> eventually a monkeys agree on who is who and falls on the right routine and a wizard pops up -> wizard invokes some magic happens with initrd that only three humans on the planet understand and the monkeys all disappear -> then init magically starts -> invokes satan -> satan starts invoking mini satans which fire up an army of consultants and sell the kernel an enterprise service bus -> the enterprise service bus starts sending and receiving messages instructing mere minion subordinates to do their job -> eventually this evolves into a booted linux system purely by coincidence rather than by design.

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 20, 2022, 11:08:01 pm
content: Embedded Linux is good fun to play with and if it's used appropriately, it's a nice OS for embedded work. But, man, it is one hell of a pain to get working on a random platform. I can see how so many people get stuck at those stages.There is virtually no support / documentation available for "how to write a device tree" - so you'd better hope your processor manufacturer knows what they're doing with their autoconfig tools. If you want to modify it then you'd better be prepared to dive into the source and tighten up your Google-Fu, maybe someone had the same issue on a different processor and you can guess what the solution is.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 20, 2022, 11:59:05 pm
content: Quote from: cdev on May 20, 2022, 09:02:16 pmBack in the days of Vista, there was some interest in running KDE on Windows to actually get a usable GUI (one that doesn't lag like crazy) back, while still using Windows for the only reason why anyone uses Windows - to use Windows apps. There just weren't enough developers interested to make that happen.Quote from: AndyBeez on May 20, 2022, 09:20:26 pmStill better than Chrome, but then again there's Chromium which is Chrome without the Google bloat.It's 2022 and none of the popular browsers has a proper option to intentionally throttle downloads and uploads in order to not slow down other uses of the network. Firefox and Chromium do have a developer menu that can be misused for that.

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 21, 2022, 02:24:01 am
content: Anything and everything with "Enterprise" in its name.Those things are not tools, they're like getting a fishing hook through your eyeball, and paying for the privilege.

author: CatalinaWOW
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 21, 2022, 02:57:44 am
content: I think most software will end up on someone's hate list. I have several, and there are two generic reasons.1. Periodic changes to the user interface. I'm looking at you Microsoft, Linux and Apple. You all do it. Apple is the least guilty, but does it too.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.All of the methods have minor pluses and minuses but none is so superior that it is worth the agony of changing habits each time you change task/software. Maybe the reason so many varieties exist is to patent or copyright and look and feel. Maybe it is because software weenies can't be bothered to see what already exists and just make up their own stuff. It drives me crazy.Perhaps this is something that the EU with its obsession with standards could actually do some good with.

author: PKTKS
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 21, 2022, 11:33:10 am
content: Quote from: Bud on May 20, 2022, 05:08:27 amundoubtedlyAnything MicrosoftPaul

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 21, 2022, 12:07:08 pm
content: Going to be honest here. Microsoft could have actually ended up with a decent platform if they didn’t jump on every bandwagon and have some decent product management. Back in the days of NT4 up to the end of windows XP it was quite a decent bit of kit. Enough to tempt me away from unixy things. I actually got a lot of real work done on time and budget with it.Annoyingly I just nabbed some contract work to do some .net maintenance so I’m going to have to purchase a windows 10 machine to do the work on. Grr. Had a PC free house for a few months at least…

author: rsjsouza
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 21, 2022, 12:44:28 pm
content: Quote from: bd139 on May 21, 2022, 12:07:08 pmBeing a heavy user of SunOS and Solaris in the turn of the century and Linux variants throughout (Fvwm, Xfree, etc.), Windows was an oasis in the GUI department - not only on the OS itself (which I really liked Solaris but it had gobs of kinks) but also Matlab and (tor)Mentor Graphics, which were plainly terrible. Interestingly, quite a few of these GUI kinks could be seen in later OSS projects such as Eclipse.All in all, anyone wll have a beef to pick with anything used heavily on a day-to-day basis... My current trouble child is MSProject and I dread to go back to Inkscape (which I will have to do in the next month) - trauma caused by heavy suffering a few years ago with its dreadful interface. I hope it got better.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 21, 2022, 12:52:22 pm
content: Quote from: rsjsouza on May 21, 2022, 12:44:28 pmAh yeah screw that. Inkscape, Gimp and Darktable are so good that I bought an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription

author: m k
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 21, 2022, 02:43:12 pm
content: Toshinden gave blisters.

author: MrMobodies
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 21, 2022, 03:57:49 pm
content: Quote from: daqq on May 20, 2022, 06:26:09 amI found it was easier to do stuff with Powerpoint 2000/2003 and than Powerpoint 2007/2010 do with the auto snapping when drawing shapes. How about they give the option to leave it alone unless I am missing something. It is rare I use those. I paid for those not a great deal but left with some disappointment.One of the worst I used was from Acronis in 2018. I was mis sold it. Old Norton Ghost not cloning EFI partitions for it to be workable so I was looking for disc imaging tools that would do it easily and found one that recommended by many reviews over the years like which was Acronis. So I emailed and phoned Acronis listing my demands and was recommended two of their software that would do the things I wanted and was provided the download links to the trial.They were Acronis True Image and Acronis Backup 12.5One of them was a server kind or thing where runs as a service, installs a http and sql server and requires me to "sign in" everytime just to use it which is a big nono.When I installed the second one, it had this stupid tablet looking interface that was bloated had large "tiles" that I found confusing but to use the facilities it needed to be "unlocked" or in other word paid for.So I paid for it to find it wouldn't 't extract disk images directly to a drive I inserted and I don't mean the one it is running off.It required me to insert a pendrive for to install a bootable copy, install the drivers to it using some script and that was not what wanted. A little message appeared just before cloning disk to disk something about it not being bootable defeating the whole purpose but I am not sure if that was the case. As a test I cloned an a hard drive with an EFI partition and the operating system from a laptop all working properly onto another hard disk using this Acronis and when I put it in didn't bootup that even Clonezilla managed to do successfully with a little messing about. Anyway followed from a long argument on the phone with them I got put through to Cleverbridge for a refund and got my money back promptly.Useless, over decorated and unfit for the purpose crippled by those who think they know the user better than themselves.Before the refund I was infuriated when I found this:https://www.acronis.com/en-us/articles/how-to-restore-individual-files/QuoteWhat kind of bullshit is that?Just because some jobs don't involve certain things prevent the user from doing it at all.Who SAYS they NEED to do it?Maybe it would have been better if that was communicated in the marketing materials at the time and it should have never been recommended to me.It was £34.99 but no software like that is worth anything if it is not going to do the very things it is suppose to do especially when being lied to.With a good look around I found Macrium Reflect Workstation which had a 60 trial unlocked trial, very simple UI and had a good go at it and had no problems copying. No over simplification and dumbing down very intuitive, I can see what I am doing, all the information is there and in the logs and not hidden behind stupid decorative tiles.I made a mistake at the time with Acronis. I did not think of Trustpilot and I see they have not got a good reputation 167 reviews 82% one star.https://uk.trustpilot.com/review/www.acronis.com

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 21, 2022, 04:55:46 pm
content: The Acronis versions before 2012 or so were great. After that they went downhill.

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 21, 2022, 05:08:00 pm
content: Quote from: PKTKS on May 21, 2022, 11:33:10 ammicrosoft does linux now too ... linux system for windows. keep that shit off my system

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 21, 2022, 05:14:15 pm
content: Quote from: CatalinaWOW on May 21, 2022, 02:57:44 amlatest ios update. for some reason the search bar is at the bottom nowto the power ofios 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 ...Quotesame 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

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 21, 2022, 05:15:14 pm
content: 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.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 21, 2022, 06:00:22 pm
content: Quote from: free_electron on May 21, 2022, 05:14:15 pmFor 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.

author: AndyBeez
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 21, 2022, 07:23:10 pm
content: 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/

author: Jester
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 21, 2022, 07:25:42 pm
content: Another vote for PADS.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 21, 2022, 08:48:41 pm
content: 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.

author: nigelwright7557
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 21, 2022, 08:50:50 pm
content: 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.

author: nigelwright7557
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 21, 2022, 08:53:28 pm
content: 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.

author: MK14
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 21, 2022, 08:54:03 pm
content: Quote from: NiHaoMike on May 21, 2022, 08:48:41 pmThe following video, seems to detail some/one of those sad, DRM (for a CD) things:

author: rsjsouza
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 21, 2022, 10:57:21 pm
content: Quote from: madires on May 21, 2022, 04:55:46 pmAs 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.

author: m98
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 21, 2022, 11:20:49 pm
content: 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.

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 22, 2022, 04:50:07 am
content: Quote from: bd139 on May 21, 2022, 06:00:22 pmi 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...Quotei 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.

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 22, 2022, 05:02:29 am
content: Quote from: m98 on May 21, 2022, 11:20:49 pmi 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.

author: Messtechniker
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 22, 2022, 06:26:05 am
content: Quote from: madires on May 21, 2022, 04:55:46 pmUnd sowas von....Agree. After dicking around with a few alternatives moved on to (paid) Macrium Reflect.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 22, 2022, 06:28:55 am
content: 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.

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 22, 2022, 06:30:39 am
content: Quote from: free_electron on May 22, 2022, 05:02:29 amAh, 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 usewindow.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...

author: Messtechniker
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 22, 2022, 01:33:32 pm
content: Quote from: bd139 on May 22, 2022, 06:28:55 amAgree. Did work mostly, except on some puters where I experienced unsolvable .Net probs.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 22, 2022, 02:37:16 pm
content: Quote from: Nominal Animal on May 22, 2022, 06:30:39 amThe 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.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 22, 2022, 02:53:08 pm
content: 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.

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 22, 2022, 03:21:13 pm
content: 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.

author: dmills
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 22, 2022, 04:13:44 pm
content: 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.

author: Codemonkey
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: May 22, 2022, 06:19:18 pm
content: PADSPCad (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.

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 22, 2022, 08:04:15 pm
content: Quote from: dmills on May 22, 2022, 04:13:44 pmyou should see the replacement for Cadence schematic capture now that they have ditched the orcad leftovers . it's stuck in 1984

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 22, 2022, 08:11:05 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on May 22, 2022, 02:37:16 pmif i take my old hp infiniium running a 150MHz pentium 1 and windows 95 and 4 meg of ram and spin that timebase button the screen refresh is instantaneous , like an analog scope.Those lecroy machines have windows 7 , 8 core cpu's with hyperthreading and 64 gigs of ram. you give the timebase knob a couple of fast spins and you will hear the cpu fan go into overload and the thing crawl slower than a drunk snail. those machines are not oscilloscopes. they are very fast digitizers and the rest is don on the pc. Rohde & Schwarz , tek and Hewlettagilentkeypackardsight do all that stuff on custom hardware. the OS is only there for the GUI : well known platforms with a friendly face for the user.

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 22, 2022, 08:14:34 pm
content: Quote from: free_electron on May 22, 2022, 08:11:05 pmIt's just bad software design.The Rigol scopes get a lot of flak for buggy software, but their DS1000Z series, for instance, has a single-core 600MHz ARM CPU running the show. The UI is snappy and responsive, not quite analog-scope speed, but not far behind. It doesn't need a fast CPU if the software is designed well. Heck, even the first-gen iPhone had a similar processor, and it did animations and touchscreen pinch-and-zoom, etc. feeling super responsive throughout.We trialed a $20k Tek scope for a while and the interface would often freeze for 1-2 seconds periodically while the scope was doing...something in the background. That's just unacceptable. The scope shouldn't do that. It speaks to poor software design; a lack of parallelism and priority. Anything taking more than 100ms immediately feels 'laggy' to users. It wasn't the only reason to discard that scope, but it was a significant one.

author: T3sl4co1l
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 23, 2022, 12:38:54 am
content: Quote from: free_electron on May 21, 2022, 05:15:14 pmI still use PSP7 regularly... very lightweight, still easier to use than GIMP, and clearly made with low RAM and slow CPUs in mind; feels like such a flex to preview a Gaussian filter on a 10Mpx image.Tim

author: T3sl4co1l
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 23, 2022, 12:51:46 am
content: Quote from: Nominal Animal on May 22, 2022, 06:30:39 amEven my Tek TDS460 has -- besides the annoyingly slow-to-respond menus -- an occasional bug which, I suspect goes something like: user input is interrupt triggered, and the front panel encoders go crunchy sometimes. So just sliding a cursor around can freeze the UI requiring a power cycle. (Fortunately the power button --which is also a soft button itself-- does not go through the same front-panel interface, so it doesn't have to be re-plugged.)HP/Agilent 100% made the best 80s-00s equipment. I'd take a HP54xxx over anything TDS -- the 460 just happened to be available last time I went shopping. Which to be clear, has been quite a while. I've certainly gotten more than my worth from it.But as for GUI programs, the sheer number of them that handle input or computation in the message thread... yeah, absurd. No excuses.Quote from: tom66 on May 22, 2022, 08:14:34 pmWas this recently?Like, GUIs aren't even the hard part... you've got gigasamples in the ass end of the thing, just... ask someone once in a while if it feels good to use?! Bring in a consultant FFS just to check the UI, accessibility features (don't forget colorblindness!), etc. Graphic designer even, maybe, make it nice and shiny and responsive. These are basic things, like, two bit web designers handle this stuff...Tim

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 23, 2022, 01:05:47 am
content: Quote from: T3sl4co1l on May 23, 2022, 12:38:54 ami also still use that one. i think 9 was the last version before corel . and the companion program "aftershot". There's another tool from back then : ACDsee

author: ebclr
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 23, 2022, 02:21:31 am
content: Kicad for sure, has the worst interface in any software I have used, totally not intuitive

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 23, 2022, 03:06:07 am
content: Quote from: T3sl4co1l on May 23, 2022, 12:51:46 amIt may not be exactly the same thing, but the underlying problem – coupling each UI state change to a particular update – is the same.Even in the example offinite impulse response filter analysisas a standalone HTML page, I separated "calculation" from "redraw". Granted, because the redraw was fast enough even on the slowest machine (with a modern browser; mainly Canvas support), I just chained them together. If it had been a problem, all I'd need is to add a global variable representing the current redraw timeout. Whenever recalculate is triggered, it would first disable any existing redraws, and then set a new timeout after calculation completes.I've used Gtk+ and Qt widget toolkits extensively. (Gtk+ is pure C, Qt is C++.) They both are based on an event loop under the toolkit control, so require an event-driven programming approach. Neither works well with major computation done in the same thread as the UI event loop, and this is typical for all UI toolkits and approaches. Even so, that –– do everything within the UI event loop; perhaps in the idle handler –– is what the widget toolkit documentation recommends. Stupid. You do not even need multiplehardwarethreads! All you need is a way to interrupt or time-slice the major computation. The simplest implementation only requires a timer interrupt, and switching the processor state and stack between the different concurrent tasks.One of the real tricks is having a way to cancel and/or restart the heavy calculation. (An atomic flag and an early return from the computation function works well.) In an oscilloscope, this is not really an option, because –– assuming I have the correct picture of how they work –– the "heavy computation" is actually communication with the dedicated capture hardware, and setting that up. I can well imagine that a hardware FPGA/ASIC designer without any user interface experience would design this communication to be a full setup information package, instead of a per-variable/feature one, because the former is just so much simpler and robust. But, it also means that the UI must be very careful as to when it decides to send such setup packages: delay too long, and the UI will be sluggish. Queue the changes, and you get the "twirl-a-knob-and-it-will-freeze".No, the control messages need to be categorized by the latencies of their effects, for best results. Something like changing the trigger level should be basically instant. Something that causes e.g. a relay to change states will take human-scale noticeable time (a fraction of a second), and therefore mustoverrideany of the faster changes. The UI side needs a configuration state machine that is aware of these latencies, so that it does not bother to e.g. set the input scale if it knows there is already a different scale selected in the UI. And yes, you indeed want to do the (necessary) highest-latency changesfirst: I'll leave it as an exercise to realize why.Simply put, you need an intermediary state machine or filter between the user events and the capture engine, to minimize the latency between UI changes to visible effects. For hardcore FPGA/ASIC designers who disdain of anything human-scale, this is "ugly" and "silly"; they feel it is an intrusion into their domain.Similarly, if you write an user interface to communicate with say an USB or Serial or Ethernet-connected device, you need to split the communication into a separate thread (often a state machine), and use a thread-safe queue or similar to pass commands/requests/state changes and results between the two. Either side also needs that small state change optimizer machine, so that changes are not queued, but combined for efficiency. Hell, even if you just write a crude tool to display the microphone signal level at the edge of your display, you'll want to use a separate thread for that, so that UI hiccups do not affect the audio stream and vice versa.For most programmers, this is hard. It is already hard to switch between event-driven and state machine logic; but to do so just because of getting a responsive UI is just not worth the effort to most –– even if they are paid to do just that.I definitely blame the developers and programmers for this kind of issues. They are solvable, and the solutions are well known. The fuckers are just too lazy or inept to do the workright. (Then again, the one complaint I always got when I wrote software for living was "it does not need to be perfect; it just needs to look like it works. We can fix the issues later, when we have time". So maybe I'm expecting too much from people.)

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 23, 2022, 04:49:46 am
content: Quote from: Nominal Animal on May 23, 2022, 03:06:07 amno. the problem is that they do everything in software on the pc side. They copy a bunch of samples from the acquisition board and then do a bunch of data crunching and visualise it.For example peak detect. you have to search the array for the minimum and maximum value. if you just did that on a million samples. that takes some time... if it is done in hardware it takes zero time ( as it is done while the data is being acquired. two digital comparators looking at what comes out of the ADC before it even goes into memory. once the memory is full you have you min and max right there. no need to go over it once more.Another gripe of mine : aliasing on a scope screen. There is only so many pixels horizontally. so how do you cram 1 million samples on a 1024x800 screen ? do you only take one every 1000 ? do you draw a line to the next one ? we all know there is a risk that creates an aliased image. The correct way to do this is to take a block of 1000 samples , find the minimum and maximum in that block and draw a vertical line ( not a line to next "sample" ) from min to max. then process the next block. so your horizontal step is simple a counter for the block being processed , while the vertical is a line from min to max. bye bye aliasing. the problem : that takes a lot of cpu cycles to do . in hardware ? can be done as the data is being acquired its a digital comparator to find min and max and at the end of 1000 samples store min and max. so you get a secondary array containing the actual stuff that needs visualisation. feed that data straight into a hardware overlay ( That's how the infiniiums did it. the scope hardware writes directly to video memory bypassing the entire pc and operating system. if you did an alt-printscreen you got a nice picture of all the windows icons and menus but the actual scope grid was a black canvas... ( actually a specific RGB value : the hardware knew it could only overlay anything having that specific RGB mark. Think of a green screen like for tv newsrooms or weather reports. anything with that specific rgb is to be replaced by hardware overlay)if you altered the timebase post-capture they simply instructed the hardware to rescan its memory and build the new min/max array ( those scope have 800x600 lcd monitors so you only need like 512 pairs horizontally... ). since the acquisition hardware can cycle the memory at 4Ghz (the scope can do 4Gs/s so it has the memory speed ) , crunching 4 megasamples takes 1 milliseconds to find the 800 min/max pairs. The LCD refresh rate is 100Hz... that means this new visualisation happens much faster than even the monitor can follow.On the newfangled machines they need to first pump all the data rom the acquisition memory over a relatively slow bus ( much slower than the acquisition memory ) into the pc memory. and then a bunch of algorithms have to run sequenctually and iteratively over the data to find what they need. in many scopes these days the acquisition memory is much much larger than the pc memory, so there is no way to pump all data over ( with a dma like mechanism for example) . the pc side simply doesn't have enough storage space. storing it on ssd or spinning rust would be an even slower nightmare... so that means the pc side must access that memory through a bus that is much slower than it could even access its own memory.that's where the bottleneck lays. it's a big dataset that needs moving or accessing through a slow bus. much slower than acquisition or main memory. and then you need to unleash iterative and sequential operations to find what is of interest.Shoving that task onto the acquisition hardware is the correct solution. that memory and logic is much much faster than the pc will ever be since it can run at acquisition speed.that's why all those cheap scope are using a simple ARm processor and a big fat fpga hooked into the acquisition memory. they don't copy data or move it or dig in it from the arm side. the arm tells the hardware build me an array of screensize with this kind of information. the hardware does that before the current lcd redraw cycle has even completed ( in the old days of vacuum balloons they did it in the vertical flyback. )Look at those older 54645D oscilloscopes. they have 4megasample memory. there is 16 megabyte total ( 8meg for the two analog channels , 4 each , and 8 meg for the 16 digital channels ). that thing is ran by a motorola 68000 clocked at 8MHz ...its display is a picture tube with 600x400 resolution. you can twirl that timebase knob as hard was you can. that screen refresh is instantaneous without flickering or lag or aliasing.It is not possible to do that with software. that 68K has a 16 bit data bus. so even if you were to pair the memories you would need to move 8megawords of data at 8MHz ? that would take one second alone. and you haven't done anything yet. counting and doing the compare to find min max on each . let's assume you need 10 instruction for each sample. you are looking at 10 seconds to do a screen redraw .. and there is tons of other things to do : scan the keyboard, encoders, the gpib , maybe run an FFT to show the spectrum of the analog channels. how about doing bus decoding or pattern matching on the logic data ?The acquisition system runs at a 100MHz clock ... find the min/max pairs on a 4meg deep block ? it can do that 25 times a second ! (it has parallel access to all data)

author: eti
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 23, 2022, 07:13:22 am
content: Linux is simultaneously a good and bad thing. It's as good as the price we pay, because the "support" is "piss off, you should know this,welearnt and so now must you, and learn all the new acronyms and syntax which some autistic 'community' assumes you knew from birth, and we know you have a busy life, but spend a month trawling sourceforge, then compile... rinse and repeat"I know the benefits and pitfalls of ALL mainstream Mac/Win/Lin OS', and use them with caution and wisdom.PS: I am autistic, we aren't ALL oblivious to HUMANS being the ones using products, and needing clear, simple guides. Linux 'community' is the reason it's not a full-blown, worldwide commercial phenomenon, because aside from a trillion conflicting variants, there's a CLEAR LACK of the ability to understand what ACTUAL 9-5 humans want, need and use. As for all the "open source is magic" mindset - utter tripe - if it WORKS and I can PAY ££ FOR SUPPORT, and not pay my valuable time chasing my tail adn tearing my hair out, I'll gladly line your pockets, screw "open source" - it's an ego massage.

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 23, 2022, 08:02:14 am
content: Quote from: free_electron on May 23, 2022, 04:49:46 amNot with dumb software and dumb data buffering schemes, no..But let's say you have a 8-bit ADC and 64-byte cachelines, and as you receive the data, you construct a parallel lookup of min-max values, filling another cacheline per 32 cachelines (2048 samples). You've now dropped the memory bandwidth required to find min-max for any range to 1/32th, except that the start and end points have a granularity of 64 samples. (So do those cachelines separately, I guess.)Similarly, if you can reorder the received data so that you get the cachelines across waveforms, you can construct the display from left to right and use all sorts of clever spanning techniques. Even antialiased lines boils down to lots and lots of additions, and a few not-too-large lookup tables (that depend on the time base and such).Using an ARM or Intel/AMD core for that kind of stupid work makes no sense. The cores are slow at that sort of stuff, and you're paying for nothing there. Instead, stick a DSP or similar between the acquire buffer and the UI processor, so that the UI processor computes and sets the lookup tables and memory transfers, and the DSP just spits out intensity slices (say, 5-bit full-height pixel columns) that the UI processor then just composes into the display.To do this sort of stuffright, one must think of the data flow. A very similar thing really bugs me with most simulator software running on HPC clusters: they calculate, then communicate, then calculate, then communicate, and so on, instead of doing them both at the same time. Why? Because it is hard to think of what data needs to be transferred after the next step, when the next step is yet to be calculated. The data does need to be present before the next time step is calculated, so essentially your data transfers need to be at least one step ahead, and that means predictive and/or heuristic transfers without false negatives (you can transfer extra, but you need to transfer all that are needed), node load balancing, and so on... Just too hard for programmers who can always just tell professors to buy more and newer hardware.Quote from: eti on May 23, 2022, 07:13:22 amNo, that's not it.For open source communities,end users are a net negative: a cost, not a benefit. Only those who contribute back, somehow, are worth the effort of helping. What "actual 9-5 humans want, need and use" is absolutely, completely irrelevant. This is why Linux greybeards laugh at you when you say something like "you need to doXso that Linux can become as popular asY". It is as silly to us as Insta-gran and Fakebook "influencers" demanding free food and accommodation.As to why paid Linux end-user support is relatively hard to find, I think it is because getting such an commercial venture going is highly risky. It is relatively simple to set up Linux user support in an organization, but as a commercial service, you have huge risks from customers who vent their disappointment at Linux not being a drop-in Windows replacement at you, ruining your reputation at the same time. The risks aren't worth the gains.I mean, I consider you, eti, a professional person. But I for sure would not like to put anyone under your ire at Linux and open source. The £20 or so an hour you'd be willing to pay would not be worth it.Perhaps it is time to just admit that Linux and open source is not for you. And that's fine; it's not supposed to be for everyone, it's just a tool among others.

author: eti
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 23, 2022, 08:49:12 am
content: Quote from: Nominal Animal on May 23, 2022, 08:02:14 am“Not for you”? Lol. I’ve been using it as a seasoned pro since 2004. That’ll be a common mistake of assuming you know someone online.The issue with Linux is not so much Linux as the arrogance of the obsessives and how they decry “evil” (read: hugely hard working, clever and deservedly successful) Microsoft etc. Sour grapes sure make a lot of whine.Linux fans whine about the fact that the hardware that is designed and made for a profitable market, IE the gargantuan and profitable desktop and server market, isn’t able to run perfectly on Linux etc etc. Hey guys, make your own hardware if you’re that upset (hang on, that would require a large paying user base and parts market that form around it due to it being dominant and used EVERYWHERE FOR DECADES)Whiners wine. I’ve heard (and stupidly taken part in) every conceivable, predictable pro Linux debate ever online, and the same junk goes round and round for years. Windows pays bills, work involving windows pays bills. Work done on Macs pays bills. Servers running Linux pays huge bills too. Desktop Linux is what’s left at the end of the meal. That’s how it panned out.If they want to be successful TRULY, then it’s time to walk out of the pity party, go home and put on their suits and go do some selling, never mind everyone else. Linux people love to evangelise and criticise. That massages egos but doesn’t pay well.

author: Kjelt
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 23, 2022, 08:56:39 am
content: Siemens TeamcenterClearcaseBoth are bureaucratic bloatware programs that should only be sold and used in Nort Korea.Eagle although I use it Who TF comes up with the stupid idea that copying some symbolsfrom one schematic to the other requires the user to manually type CUT whileit is a copy and not a cut go to another schematic and type PASTE. It is a GUI a rightmouse click should suffice for this..... unbelievable.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 23, 2022, 09:09:05 am
content: Quote from: Nominal Animal on May 23, 2022, 08:02:14 amThe reality is that you can't do it in hardware either (until recently; GPUs are becoming more mainstream in embedded systems). Think about going through >100MB of data and process it in a timely matter. So clever sub-sampling techniques are used to create an image that represents the minimum / maximum while having some aliasing onpurposeto indicate there is an anomaly in the signal. After all, an oscilloscope is intended to provide meaningfull information about a signal even if the individual periods can not be shown. A simple test you can do is by acquiring a frequency sweep of a reasonably high frequency with a small span. This will reveal the sub sampling.

author: HighVoltage
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 23, 2022, 09:25:40 am
content: Quote from: free_electron on May 23, 2022, 01:05:47 amDon't laugh....I am still on ACDSee Photo Manager 2009.It is fast and quick in all aspects.Every newer version I tried just sucked.

author: zzattack
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: May 23, 2022, 10:39:17 am
content: Embarcadero C++Builder.. their raison d'être has to be companies that are overcommitted to their current software base. They do have excellent marketing and there was a time when their VCL (from Delphi) offered advantages over competitors.While they claim to be the premier platform for rapid application development on Windows/Android/iOS/whatever-the-hell-else, allow me to just briefly highlight some of its very basic shortcomings:- frequent compiler bugs- longstanding STL issues- code editor is super annoying with:* undo/redo buffer corrupting frequently* inability to set custom hotkeys* inability to disable cursor-past-end-of-line* no block-mode editing* ctrl+arrow key navigation skips over nearly all common code symbols- opening a file from the project browser opens that file about 50% of the time, the other 50% another seemingly random window/tab receives focus- terrible UI editor* no undo AT ALL* everything visual studio and Qt do right, Embarcadero does wrong* inheritance of UI components requires manually updating all instances where component is reused- debugger is next to useless; this is probably the biggest productivity killer* no inspection of STL container types* accuracy of call stacks is hit and miss* inability to inspect local vars of calling function* frequently crashes to a point where system requires reboot* about 80% of the time variables cannot be inspected, showing only ""* data breakpoints cannot have conditions- no parallel compilation until recently (acquired a 3rd party plugin to do so, buggy)- contents of project files change every time they are opened; terrible for version control- custom compiler/linker, still based on clang 5.0, but not supporting most compiler switchesAbsolutely abysmal how debugging on a PIC8 with MPLAB is a less frustrating experience than working with this IDE when targeting Win32 for a modern desktop application.

author: RedLion
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: May 23, 2022, 11:19:42 am
content: I'd like to add MathCad to the list.I don't even get the point of it, like what problem are they trying to solve?The syntax is so confusing that you are forced to use the drop down menus, the UI is MS Office, but worse, and of course it's nice and slow.It's like someone thought "what if we made MATLAB, but worse?"Oh well, at least it's reasonably cheap.

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 23, 2022, 12:46:11 pm
content: Quote from: eti on May 23, 2022, 08:49:12 amLinux developers don't give a toss about whether their software is used or not. The situation regarding help and support with Linux is similar to those asking questions on this forum. He explained it quite well at the end of the post linked below:https://www.eevblog.com/forum/programming/rust-is-political/msg4188961/#msg4188961In other words, to the developers, most of the time users are just a pain in the bum. They ask silly questions. The only time they're helpful is when they find bugs, but for a developer to help you, you need to convince them you've tried everything and researched the problem properly.This doesn't count the Linux fanboys who are convinced it's the best thing ever and everyone should use it.

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 23, 2022, 01:10:58 pm
content: Quote from: eti on May 23, 2022, 08:49:12 amIf using an OS made me that unhappy, I'd just switch.I do not believe you can be much of a pro when you do not even understand the basic operating principles of the developer communities, and so deeply, so emotionally, hate the software and its developers.Quote from: eti on May 23, 2022, 08:49:12 amEh? Past business practices are what made Microsoft evil. It is much less evil now. I personally wouldn't even use "evil" for MS anymore; especially not compared to social media companies.Claiming that anyone who thought that was only "arrogant obsessive sour grapes who whine a lot", is just lying. Perhaps it helps you feel better about yourself, but it has nothing to do with the truth. If you ignore how open source developer communities work, and assume they are just your personal support forum, it's your own damn fault you're ignored and not helped, not theirs.Quote from: Zero999 on May 23, 2022, 12:46:11 pmTrue. Like I said, time, effort, and knowledge is currency. Spend some to help the developers, and they'll help you back.I'm not sure which group I have more practical trouble with, the ones who insist on using the term "open sores", or the Linux or FOSS fanbois.Reminds me of the time when I was seven or so, and hammered about a thousand nails into a small piece of log. I made a hedgehog!Not exactly a good use of a hammer and nails, in hindsight.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 23, 2022, 01:11:58 pm
content: Quote from: Zero999 on May 23, 2022, 12:46:11 pmOh hell I'm not getting involved in that thread at all.You're right. I don't get involved in open source any more. I used to. No one gives a shit and most of the developers I've had the misfortune of having to deal with are basically comic book guy from the Simpsons. Some of them are positively mentally unwell. I know that's cruel but it's true. I've tried over and over to get things fixed. I've tried fixing them myself and PR'ing them in as requested. I either get a face full of crap or silence. Waste of time so I don't bother. I merely leverage the pile of shit to make money. I don't even do that now - I prefer to tell other people what to do for more money and not have to deal with that level of problemWhat's even worse is it's the same with paid support options from Redhat etc as well. They employ a lot of the core developers and it's impossible even getting them to fix or patch something.Then again that's most software companies. I will notable exclude Apple and Microsoft on that as I have actually had defects acknowledged and fixed from both vendors on a non galactic timescale.

author: eugene
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 23, 2022, 03:44:28 pm
content: Since the discussion seems headed in the direction of "the worst software ever is anything FOSS" I'll counter with this: over the decades, the worst software I've used were programs that I paid some solo hobbyist $20 for.(Bit of advice: if you write a post and find that most of the content is just rehashing your tired old complaint about some generalized group of people you disagree with, then don't press the "Post" button.)

author: T3sl4co1l
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 23, 2022, 03:48:18 pm
content: In general, less popular / commonly used software is worse than very popular software. Cost is irrelevant, or at best weakly correlated. So, take your pick.Quote from: eugene on May 23, 2022, 03:44:28 pm"But I need to know that everyone hates the same things I do!!!"Tim

author: eugene
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 23, 2022, 04:19:33 pm
content: Quote from: T3sl4co1l on May 23, 2022, 03:48:18 pmThe only effective cure for that problem is to be less hateful.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 23, 2022, 04:28:53 pm
content: It's not hate, it's experience.To quote my father: "If you put your dick in a crocodile, you're not going to hate the crocodile for what it does, but you are going to learn not to put your dick in a crocodile again".

author: hans
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 23, 2022, 05:26:25 pm
content: There are people that take software as serious as a political view or religion. The ones that don't want to use Facebook, Google, Whatsapp, Telegram.. anything that's proprietary or "has data". If I ask them to play an online game, they say they can't, because their open source NVIDIA GPU driver is still bodged on Debian.. an OS where loading a decently performing (but non-supported) binary-blob driver is considered a sin, and moreover they don't want to boot into Windows as they haven't done so in months and it will likely result in a update-reboot loop for 3 days straight, at which point the opportunity of 'lets play a game' has sadly passed. I've no experience with Mac because their hardware pricing & repair policy is atleast as stupid.I have thrown in some personal frustrations in that hypothetical story as I have "things to hate" on all platforms or operating systems. But I've met plenty of (CS) people on uni that were close or similar to this mindset. And this is something I hate even more than having something against 1 piece of software; rather having contrived such a small world of possibilities that it's impossible to do anything productive or fun. In the end, for me computers and software are just tools. I prefer to use Linux for embedded programming, because in my workflow the tools are more readily available and easier to use. I've used Visual Studio, Keil and IAR software before, and I can make things work with it, but I'd rather not again. I rather don't want to go anywhere near the terminal when I see a Windows machine, let alone use WSL or jump through a thousand hoops to install cygwin, CMake and GCC so CLion (my favorite IDE) can finally compile my hello world program for an ARM processor. But even as a daily Linux user, I still prefer to use Altium for PCB design, as that's what I've learned at several companies and am most productive with. I can't ever go back to Eagle or KiCad, those tools and UIs feel like a stone age.But going back to "bad software", I also cast my vote to Mentor Graphics. I recall my grad internship where they showed me DxDesigner as "the" tool for cooperative schematic design. But even after creating a simple schematic for a LED buck converter, that tool had managed to corrupt it's design database on a solo design project. HOW? How is this even supposed to work OK in a multi-user design environment? IIRC it even had a (shortcut) button to "fix database" -- it's apparently a normal thing to happen more often, so obviously they implemented a "fix" for it. Atleast equally bad was PADS.. that software DRC engine and Gerber exporter has resulted in several PCB designs modified with a Dremel.

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 23, 2022, 11:39:14 pm
content: Quote from: Nominal Animal on May 23, 2022, 08:02:14 amthat's what they do. they stream the data from adc to memory. there is a min/max detector looking at every sample passing by. after x samples the pair is stored in a visualisation buffer.if you change the timebase post acquisition they simply instruct that hardware to stream the data from ram , back into ram so it flies by that min/max detector again. it's a circular buffer. you fill it from the adc. post processing ? send the output of the buffer back to the input and to a once-over of all addresses.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 24, 2022, 04:31:10 am
content: Quote from: hans on May 23, 2022, 05:26:25 pmIt's unlikely that an open source purist is going to buy a Nvidia GPU nowadays, AMD graphics drivers are open source and perform way better than the current open source Nvidia drivers.

author: mansaxel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 24, 2022, 06:13:21 am
content: Early versions of SAP R/3, using the thick desktop client. Took one day to register one month of work, when work was 20 8-hour days of exactly the same billing code.Any network code written or endorsed by The Lennart, especially DNS or DHCP related. (the idea of a init replacement that can restart processes cleverly is not a bad one, only implemented better by others, like on AIX, since 1994 or so)Any license management software, case in pointflexlm. (one can argue that it is successful, because its job is to prevent people from running software, and there it certainly is an overachiever.)H-PUKES (AIX wannabe, with one of the worst compilers ever almost-bundled. Would have been OK if free. Was not. )Solaris manpages written by people who would rather write a dissertation using Complicated Words than tell people how to run the fucking program.Software without sensible defaults.I've been using OS X since about 2003, and am still with it. I mostly like it, but: Every release they make it less Unix and more iOS, and we complain, and continue using it. As if we're slow-boiled toads. I need to stick kexts (kernel modules / drivers) into mine, and that is more and more painful, and often accompanied by "you should really reconsider that" warnings.I have very few complaints with OpenBSD and FreeBSD. If I can, that's what I run.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 24, 2022, 06:45:20 am
content: Regarding kexts I really think those need to die. Windows is doing the same to some degree as well. It stops the whole “relabel generic serial adapter with different vendor code” garbage. We have USB standard device classes and AirPrint. No drivers needed!

author: mansaxel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 24, 2022, 08:39:55 am
content: Quote from: bd139 on May 24, 2022, 06:45:20 amThis is not for USB serial (but yes, it used to be. Now they've got all the ususal suspects in-kernel, which is second best to device classes). It's for arcane but very useful things like network file systems.Ever heard of OpenAFS? It is a horrible concoction, slow and requires a level 7 magician juggling lots of moving parts in reasonable lockstep. It also is 1000x better than any other network file system. And since I am a grumpy old Unix greybeard, I happen to think that the current "API means a badly documented HTTPS-carried pile of JSON poo to a load balancer (implying broken caching as well, for lulz) because distributed eventual consistency is hard" trend should be taken out and shot, I think that the classic file system model still wins.

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 24, 2022, 04:53:10 pm
content: Quote from: mansaxel on May 24, 2022, 06:13:21 amwell they are all Stanford alumni , so they thumb their nose at you. talk about an evil company.... giving away their hardware to universities so students get used to it and then demand the same machinery (waaaay overpriced) when they go to work somewhere.One of the founders is still in dispute about a piece of beach he illegally owns (or doesnt)

author: Zoli
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 24, 2022, 05:53:23 pm
content: Quote from: free_electron on May 24, 2022, 04:53:10 pmHeowns the access to the beach; this kind of behaviour is worse then just fighting over the beach in question, IMNHO.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 24, 2022, 10:08:18 pm
content: Quote from: mansaxel on May 24, 2022, 08:39:55 amProblem with filesystems is they only deal with streams of bytes. Problems are slightly more complicated than that as are transactions, consistency and locking. Not to mention disconnected devices and latent consistency.Agree with your assertions about APIs however. HTTP and JSON are the wrong solution. I probably went on about this before but I am partially through implementing something completely new to bridge these two problems. It's long, complicated and painful and my motivation is lacking at the moment

author: mansaxel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 24, 2022, 10:14:46 pm
content: Quote from: free_electron on May 24, 2022, 04:53:10 pmSUN hardware and software, excluding the SysV doldrums from 5.1 through 5.6, and not talking so much about the low-end SunBlade machines with IDE disks, was mostly excellent. The manpages sometimes are horrible. And their attempts at building a system for patching the OS did leave something to be desired, but it could mostly be circumvented. A Java GUI program that insisted to be run on the actual console, wouldn't that be a splendid idea for a server OS that runs on Real Computers? (A Real Computer runs Unix, is natively Network Byte Order, and has a serial console at 9600 8n1, that isn't an afterthought which will only do 83% of what the graphical console, if it even exists, can do. This obviously excludes anything X86 from being a Real Computer)This is all completely irrelevant now, because Oracle bought them and turned it all to shit.Quote from: free_electron on May 24, 2022, 04:53:10 pmRich people, regardless of which software company they founded / funded (or not), will do these things. It is irrelevant to the discussion and smacks of axes to grind. Let's save that for Larry Ellison, shall we?

author: mansaxel
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 24, 2022, 10:31:55 pm
content: Quote from: bd139 on May 24, 2022, 10:08:18 pmI'm going to be even more back-asswards and state that RDBMS is far from dead, and has solutions to this. But it is not fancy to use it, because developers have not been allowed in to mess with it, and therefore they insist on using glorified BDB hashes instead.Quote from: bd139 on May 24, 2022, 10:08:18 pmI'd be delighted to read more when you're bored with moving house and have taken that up again.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 24, 2022, 10:41:51 pm
content: Quote from: mansaxel on May 24, 2022, 10:31:55 pmYes. One of my solutions I have implemented before was actually a disconnected SQLite replicated to a master DB. The replication was over HTTP / JSON though so you won't like it. Ironically this is the same thing Apple use for their cloud stuff (Core Data) even though I didn't know at the time when I blindly reimplemented everything they did.I use Apple's API every day for tasks, notes, music and spreadsheets and it works quite well.Quote from: mansaxel on May 24, 2022, 10:31:55 pmI'll stick it on github when I get a chance to remove all the embarrassing bits and document it. It has evolved a cranky Forth like programming language since I last mentioned it which allows you to distribute code with workload rather than compile it into node controllers like the first version. Eventually it'll evolve into a mutant of a distributed lisp machine and kubernetes and then I'll look like an idiot

author: TimNJ
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 25, 2022, 02:53:07 am
content: $500 to Chroma (ATE) for a horrendous 20 year old LabView based program to control an AC source from a PC GUI interface. I was reminded of the glorious early 2000’s color schemes of some programs. Hot pink + forest green anyone?Oh and no free update path when they finally updated the godforsaken thing a year ago to support additional hardware features. Dish out another $500 if you want it.

author: VK3DRB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 25, 2022, 08:08:23 am
content: Quote from: free_electron on May 20, 2022, 01:09:38 amLabwindows is actually pretty good, but yes overpriced. You can use C# and DLLs instead. NI is a bit of a ripoff.

author: VK3DRB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 25, 2022, 08:19:01 am
content: Quote from: ajb on May 19, 2022, 03:55:04 pmAltium is WAY overpriced on it subscription costs. The cost has increased a lot over the years. It is now $A 2,400 for a one year's subscription. I reluctantly renewed, but this will be the last time. They should give a $100 discount to a user for every verified new bug he reports.

author: nfmax
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 25, 2022, 08:46:12 am
content: DOORSVery briefly, andmanyyears ago, but still...

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: May 25, 2022, 08:56:13 am
content: Windows 10 -- Even free with a computer is too much.

author: Bassman59
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 25, 2022, 04:58:18 pm
content: Microsemichip Libero.oh my what a load of stinky poo.

author: Gribo
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: May 27, 2022, 07:14:45 pm
content: I'll take your DxDesigner and up it with Veribest and AcePlus.AcePlus ran well on a 486DX2 laptop. Veribest (name changed after Ingram Micro was acquired) made a Pentium 2 cry.Also, LabVIEW - NI just changed it to subscription only - Guess who is moving to C# and Python?

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 27, 2022, 07:25:05 pm
content: Quote from: Halcyon on May 25, 2022, 08:56:13 amAfter today I'm going to add Windows 11 to that list...

author: HighVoltage
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 28, 2022, 08:39:02 am
content: Microsoft .NET FrameworkIf you have a newer version of Microsoft .NET Framework installed, the older software does not recognize itIf you want to install an older version of Microsoft .NET Framework, it is refused because newer versions are available.It's ridicules !

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 28, 2022, 09:03:44 am
content: That mostly Microsoft’s schizophrenia showing. The technology itself is fairly good. But the versioning snd management of it is comedically bad.I spent about 5 hours on calls last week helping two companies around .net framework problems. Ah can’t install 4.8. Oh that’ll be because you’re on windows 10 1511 and haven’t installed any windows updates for 6 years because you read on a forum that updates were evil. Oh and your machine is infested with shit which is bad because now I have to legally report you to compliance

author: HighVoltage
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 28, 2022, 09:40:59 am
content: Yes, I agree, that .NET Framework works well, when running.But try to install 3 different CAD programs on one PC and all of them want a different .NET Framework.Eventually one gets it running with lots of patients but the steps to do so can drive you nuts.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 28, 2022, 11:32:02 am
content: It’s fairly simple. Just install the optional .net 3.5 from windows add remove features and run all windows updates in. That will cover it now. Both the 3.5 and 4.x frameworks can be used along side each other and the 4.x is backwards compatible.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 28, 2022, 11:45:14 am
content: Quote from: HighVoltage on May 28, 2022, 09:40:59 amFor that reason I have different VMs for some applications. Just to make sure installing one application can't mess up the other. Virtualbox is a real blessing!

author: HighVoltage
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 28, 2022, 12:26:24 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on May 28, 2022, 11:45:14 amI should give that a try, thanks!

author: neil555
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: May 28, 2022, 01:18:31 pm
content: There's so much badness to choose from but here's a few ...Linux (any version)GCC (has to be the worst compiler ever)Xilinx ISEAnything by Adobe

author: Nominal Animal
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 28, 2022, 02:19:01 pm
content: Quote from: neil555 on May 28, 2022, 01:18:31 pmReally? I admit I haven't used Adobe Photoshop since Adobe moved to subscription-based licensing a decade ago, but before that, it really was the bees knees for image manipulation.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 28, 2022, 02:29:12 pm
content: Indeed. Photoshop and Lightroom are absolutely excellent. Nothing comes near them.They are the two bits of software that doesn’t hurt to pay for. It’s also really cheap!

author: fourfathom
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 28, 2022, 03:42:57 pm
content: Quote from: Zoli on May 24, 2022, 05:53:23 pmAs far as I can tell, he owns the beach down to the Mean High Tide line (below MHT all beaches in California are public property). The previous owner allowed access to the public portion of the beach, sometimes charging a fee and otherwise not, but this access was voluntarily given and not a deeded easement. The current owner (Vinod Khosla, one of the founders of Sun Microsystems) decided to no longer allow access over his property, and I believe that this is his legal right. A group of people who had been using this access complained and Khosla was sued. Sometimes "Adverse Possession" is claimed when access over private property is desired, but I don't think this really applies in this case. But that's the battle.Disclosure: I know Vinod, he was our principal venture capital partner at my last company (a very successful start-up).

author: Gregg
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 28, 2022, 05:00:07 pm
content: *Anything Norton*I used to install Norton anti-virus on my wife’s computer because she isn’t too careful with the things she clicks on. I used to buy the retail version good for a year when it was on sale for about 75% off of the overly optimistic retail price.A couple of years ago, I purchased a new copy on a CD on sale at Fry’s. (I have fond memories of Fry’s) On the box was some ambiguous wording about subscription. The deal was that I couldn’t install the software that I purchased unless I logged on to Norton and signed up for automatic renewal with a credit card. Like I would trust a company that claims to be a major player in the internet protection racket that was operating in a manner that I was (presumably) paying them to avoid.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 28, 2022, 05:12:08 pm
content: Quote from: Gregg on May 28, 2022, 05:00:07 pmExcept for Norton Commander... 30+ years later I'm still using the Linux clone

author: HighVoltage
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 28, 2022, 05:13:40 pm
content: Quote from: Gregg on May 28, 2022, 05:00:07 pmAnything Norton was top notch unlit they got bought by Symantec.Everything Symantec sucks!

author: themadhippy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 28, 2022, 05:58:32 pm
content: Quotewould rather have a 50 year old norton commando

author: HighVoltage
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 28, 2022, 06:13:36 pm
content: I used the Norton Commander every day as my file handling tool in those days.How amazing this tool was and nothing came close !

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 28, 2022, 06:18:01 pm
content: The only reason Norton commander was so popular was DOS was so shit. mv and cp are better than nc

author: Gregg
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 28, 2022, 07:11:58 pm
content: Quote from: themadhippy on May 28, 2022, 05:58:32 pmThat would be Norton Hardware:Many memories of Lucaselectricsmagic smoke, Amal carburetors and leaking oil.

author: T3sl4co1l
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 28, 2022, 08:17:37 pm
content: Quote from: bd139 on May 28, 2022, 02:29:12 pmAs I understand it, since their move to subscription based licensing -- and also generally fuck Adobe for all the usual greedy buggy reasons -- the correct price is $0 "wink wink nudge nudge", which is indeed really cheap.But I don't use it personally so YMMV.Tim

author: srb1954
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 29, 2022, 12:13:47 am
content: Quote from: HighVoltage on May 28, 2022, 06:13:36 pmLotus Magellan was also very good. Got a lot of use out of for many years. Only stopped using when when Windows came out and Lotus basically abandoned the product.

author: joeqsmith
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 29, 2022, 12:42:38 am
content: One of the first programs I had to run on the IBM PC was VisiSchedule. That set the bar for the next several decades....Looks like you can even download a copy:https://winworldpc.com/product/visischedule/12

author: joeqsmith
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 29, 2022, 12:47:07 am
content: Quote from: HighVoltage on May 28, 2022, 06:13:36 pmI was using something called XTree and continued to use it long after Windows came out (when windows ran under DOS).

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 29, 2022, 08:21:17 am
content: Quote from: T3sl4co1l on May 28, 2022, 08:17:37 pmI don’t actually mind paying for it. It’s £10 a month for photoshop and lightroom and they get updated regularly with actual useful features. Haven’t found any bugs yet.

author: rsjsouza
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 29, 2022, 11:29:53 am
content: Quote from: joeqsmith on May 29, 2022, 12:47:07 amXtree (and later XTree Gold) and its competitor PCTools were excellent file browsers - light years ahead of the crap File Explorer of Windows 2.x/3.x/95/98I was never a big fan of Norton Commander on the DOS days, but nowadays I use a File Explorer utility that is similar in shape, named FreeCommander. Quite excellent for the price.Oops, sorry for derailing the thread: we are here to bash software, not praise it.

author: joeqsmith
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 29, 2022, 11:55:56 pm
content: "... not praise it."I think I still have the manual still on my bookshelf for Xtree Gold. Didn't they change something in the Gold version that screwed up the secrete sauce?Thinking about their UI, back in those early days, I was writing my .COM programs in assembler and later in C. It seems like I had some software from MagnaCarta that allowed me to use the color monitor and get some of those fancy exploding dialog boxes and such. I had a math library from a company called MIX that I used. Both were very low cost for us hobbyists.Really, thinking back, outside of some of the very early software I don't remember too many problems. I used (still do) FPGAs and when Altera came out with Quartus I was beta testing it. Their applications engineers came for a visit so I could demonstrate that it could not build a simple NAND gate!We used to use Sun and Apollos and were on the hunt for a better simulator. We went to one of the major software companies to have a look at their tools. I had prepared a schematic just in case they asked us for a circuit, which to my surprise, they did. So they enter my trojan horse and I provide them with some details on how to run it. Core dump! Took down the whole system.They were upset and of course asked me details about it and I explained how I had simulated that same circuit that day with PSPICE at $3000 a copy. If you played at all with those work stations, you know it wasn't going to be cheap. That may have been Mentor.

author: Doctorandus_P
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 30, 2022, 02:18:51 am
content: EdWin was probably my second worst (after windoze).It was a PCB program I bought back in the '90-ies and after a while I discovered that it did not (always) remove a connection from the netlist if you deleted a wire between schematic symbols. That was an immediate one way ticket to the garbage bin.

author: RedLion
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: June 01, 2022, 08:34:41 am
content: Quote from: VK3DRB on May 25, 2022, 08:19:01 amMate, you haven't seen the price politics of Mentor CAD. Yes, Altium is the Ferrari of EDAs. It's expensive to buy and maintain, but it gets the job done really well (even if you don't like the UI that much).Mentor Xpedition is more like your pre-war Rolls Royce. The cost is insane (we're talking 100 kilobucks PER LICENSE, plus tens of thousands for the annual "support package", which is a laptop in a closet somewhere), it is slow to start, slow to run and it breaks down a lot (I just had 4 crashes in 45 minutes because I dared try to rename a net).Plus the UI is from 1995 and not customizable at all, eg. the hotkeys to rotate a component are Ctrl+Shift+R. Note that Ctrl+R, Shift+R, or just R, are not assigned to anything. Doesn't matter, get f'kin used to it because that's the hotkeys, end of. Of yourse, the designators and properties all rotate along, so you have to rotate each of them back afterwards if you like reading the right way up.

author: Halcyon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: June 01, 2022, 08:56:18 am
content: Quote from: HighVoltage on May 28, 2022, 06:13:36 pmI was an X-Tree Gold kind of guy.

author: rsjsouza
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 01, 2022, 11:36:07 am
content: Quote from: joeqsmith on May 29, 2022, 11:55:56 pmSince you mentioned it, I vaguely recall something on the "Gold" version that my dad disliked and I loved, as it was the default behaviour in my beloved PCTools (that stupid Norton killed it) - pergaps it was something related to the way the disks were scanned? My memory fails me...Quote from: joeqsmith on May 29, 2022, 11:55:56 pmMy dad was an x86 assembly wiz and taught me enough for me to venture into this as well. Amazing what one could do with up to 32kB of binary executable (the limit of a .COM executable). Good times.My dad's source code listings were more than 1MB (with comments, of course) - all that was crunched into a mere ~20kB. He loved kedit as his coding platform.

author: snarkysparky
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 01, 2022, 12:29:08 pm
content: Siemens step7 PLC software. It is simply unfinished software. The engineers got it to where *they* could use it and called it done.You literally have to open some screens and write down obscure numbers and take that back to another screen and type it into a box.Also hate labview VI programming. It's all good if you got finished blocks to tie together but if you need to create your own logic is sucks.These are programs I likeLTSpiceHandbrakeSumatraPDFOctaveFreematspeedcrunchavidemuxtinycadLibrecadnotepad++sharpdevelopaudacityirfanviewdiptrace

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 01, 2022, 12:46:27 pm
content: Quote from: neil555 on May 28, 2022, 01:18:31 pmGCC is bad? Man, you must not have used XC8. I reported at least four different bugs in that compiler that literally produced garbage code.GCC is actually a very good compiler; but it suffers from trying to do everything (every architecture, hundreds of optimisations, multiple languages.) This makes it very bloated, but I think it's preferable to having something useless. The linker toolchains are byzantine and tricky to understand for cross-compilation, but I got there eventually. It's one of those things that's poorly documented and a bit of the blind leading the blind.

author: Zero999
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 01, 2022, 01:31:17 pm
content: Quote from: tom66 on June 01, 2022, 12:46:27 pmPICs, especially the baseline devices are a complete turd to program. It's truly amazing any compiler works.

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 01, 2022, 01:36:32 pm
content: Please choose the one you dislike:( ) Emacs( ) vi

author: Alex Eisenhut
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 01, 2022, 01:37:08 pm
content: Quote from: Zero999 on June 01, 2022, 01:31:17 pmYeah, I guess you need to look at the General Instrument PIC from 1976 to understand why it's like that. It's a very sparse design.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 01, 2022, 01:50:00 pm
content: They are fine for the intended purpose.Wedging C in them somehow was a WTF when it came out for me at least.

author: tom66
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 01, 2022, 02:22:40 pm
content: Not to turn this into a processor debate but the 8-bit PIC architecture is crap. A single working register then cramming in file-register-as-pointer-then-increment and things like that into the PIC18 architecture was a horrid mistake. Why they didn't go with something like 4-8 working registers and indirect addressing on any register I'll never really appreciate - the whole architecture is *weird*.The PIC24/dsPIC33 architecture on the other hand, is actually rather nice. It's been designed by someone who appreciates processor design with many useful features for assembler programmers too.

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 01, 2022, 02:42:53 pm
content: Quote from: madires on June 01, 2022, 01:36:32 pmdone !

author: Jester
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: June 02, 2022, 01:30:21 pm
content: How about the numbering scheme in MS Word?When I think about the complexity of some software for example Altium to something as simple as Word and then consider the resources MS has and the number of users, how is it even possible to screw up something so simple and then not fix it it?

author: T3sl4co1l
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 02, 2022, 01:55:09 pm
content: What numbering scheme? What complexity? Screw up which?Offhand I would guess Word is more complex than Altium, in overall design/construction, and depth of development over the years. But both are pretty well up there.Herein lies one of the disconnects of software: what we perceive to be simple (i.e., Word), is often unimaginably complex in comparison, all that effort being behind the scenes, hiding that complexity from the user -- or, perhaps, tweaking it to a user-friendly level of complexity, because we certainly should not fool ourselves that graphical design, language, and human interface are simple, either!Tim

author: nigelwright7557
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 17, 2022, 10:05:34 pm
content: Quote from: Benta on May 19, 2022, 06:37:15 pmWindows was written to be highly complex to stop others trying to replace it or copy it.WPF, .net, .net core, Winforms etc etc all add to the bloatware.I do a lot of Windows dev work.Someone somehow cocked up uploading selected files to a website in Visual Studio.Instead you had to upload the whole website, a real pain and took ages.I complained and they eventually fixed it.Only to find on next revision it was back to square one !FFS !They fixed it again and then messed it up againCurrently it is back to fixed but who knows for how long.A few years ago they removed C++ winforms and my program relied on it.I complained and eventually it was put back in but only as an option.I am now moved over to .net core which seems better and faster than C#.Hopefully they wont mess that up or make it obsolete.