Ask HN: What is the worst product you still use? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What is the worst product you still use?

10 pointshershyb_15 comments

I think a lot of people are stuck with a bad product that they would prefer not to use, what is the worst product that you still have to deal with now?

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Every single build tool I still use. They’re either trash or constrained by trash. The “easy to use” tools are typically the hardest to use because they make everything that happens either totally opaque or incredibly difficult to introspect. Basically none of them follow the principles that are otherwise idiomatic for their platform (example: I cannot name a single JS-target build tool which is type safe or even validates configs before execution; I certainly can’t think of one that’s generally stateless or promotes composition). They all tend to rely on wildly unknowable magic to work around platform inadequacies.

If it sounds like I have a better approach in mind, I sure do. My main stacks are TypeScript on Node & Browser. Tools for these builds could easily be type safe by being built with TS as an assumption, and easily debuggable by being piped in stages just like a normal Unix chain. This doesn’t have to be wildly inefficient, the type system knows enough to determine what can be processed concurrently, and intermediate build products could be virtual without hitting the FS.

A naive approach just to prove this out would disregard those efficiency considerations and just literally pipe a series of builds with existing tools, each one taking the previous product as input.

Fair to say with my distribution of calendars in multiple google and ms calendars I find all calendar solutions horrendously inadequate on a daily basis.

Have tried Woven of recent times but it doesn’t cut it. I miss Sunrise (MS bought them).

Evernote.

The product is getting slower, more bloated and less user friendly with each release. That's been going on for many years now. I really wonder what's happening at that company.

This. I've been a paying Evernote user since 2008. I realized the other day how frustrating it has become to use. Like my windows just turn black, until I restart the app. Also seems the UI is not as easy to use as it used to be.

Recently I've been seriously considering switching to OneNote.

Internet in Germany. It's slow and expensive. I hope Starlink will disrupt this industry.

Everything Google does. We're locked in because of familiarity and network effects.

I have a feeling that might just be a rant about Google (maybe because of privacy issues?). What products are bad? For instance: Google Search. Why is it bad?

Google search is abysmal. It ignores most of my keywords and doesn't support literal keyword searches anymore.

Search and Gmail seem to be first-class citizens, but almost everything else seems like it's in maintenance mode. I also know from friends who work(ed) there that Google's culture rewards things that are new, not improving existing products.

Google Assistant is a particularly egregious example of a product that has gotten worse over time.

Probably the web browsers. (I had some ideas of better ones, but they don't have it.) Some browsers (such as ELinks) have some good ideas, but many don't, and they are also incomplete in many ways.

In my 2002 rav4 I have a tape deck audio cable so i can listen to spotify while driving.

Quickbooks!

https://www.dmv.com/

For a sight that is so necessary to most Americans, it's really lacking in basic information and excessive in unnecessary information

That does not belong to the DMV of any state. Have you visted the DMV site for your state? As an example, here is California [1] It seems Wyoming uses .us and no https. [2] Nevada uses .com but at least has https [3] Now I am curious how much deviation each state has. They were supposed to follow the pattern www.dmv.[state].gov. Something went off the rails it seems.

[1] - https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/ [california dmv]

[2] - http://www.dot.state.wy.us/home.html [wyoming dmv]

[3] - https://dmvnv.com/index.htm [nevada dmv]

And for everyone's complaining (and I had felt it in other states) I have to say the Florida DMV isn't that bad. I've rarely waited even in person more then 20 minutes, I have been able to do most things online for quite a number of years and their site while not great isn't horrible. Don't get me wrong, it could be better, but just I've not had the nightmare DMV experience with Florida that people equate with big states.

And to your point on URL's I don't think there is any real pattern. https://www.flhsmv.gov/ is Florida's state level DMV and counties have their own separate sites for local tag/tax offices.

For a sight that is so necessary to most Americans, it's really lacking in basic information and excessive in unnecessary information

PEBKAC. You've been scammed. That's not a DMV site. It's a web site that does very well playing Google's SEO game.

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