What is the worst computer program you have ever used?

[Syn20]

In terms of publicly available software, a database management tool called Toad, made by Dell (or, a subsidiary of Dell at least), is by far the worst.
This program would regularly fail to resolve queries, and crash if you loaded a table which was only a few hundred records. God forbid you want to run a DB function. Absolute trash, and this is from only about 6 years ago. If you think iTunes is/was trash, you ain't seen nothing.

Appcelerator also deserves a mention. Even as a senior developer, I absolutely refuse to work with this ever again. Requiring an account in order to access a project is common with the likes of Github, Bitbucket, and other solutions. Requiring an account even though you've got the code, just so you can access the local API's and plugins is trash. It's sort of like "This code is ours, but you're locking it away behind a login which is completely irrelevant to actually being able to do my job".

In terms of a common enemy, Siebel. CRM is difficult to do well, but this program was overloaded even at the stock configuration. It'd randomly crash, and it tended to require browser plugins that only worked for Internet Explorer. Enterprises and corporations being the way they are, it meant that you were often stuck with a version of IE that was 3 major versions behind the more current. It was notoriously slow even at the best of times, and incredibly convoluted to use. Ever been trying to deal with a customer issue over the phone, only to get 90% of the way through a long process and then Siebel crashes on you, leaving this open case in their account which you now can't access, and having to start over? Bonus points was when you got told to 'get out of wrap' (which is lingo for dealing with work for a customer case after the call is finished) because you've had to go through the entire process again.

SAP gets a mention too. It wasn't nearly as bad as Siebel for stability, but it's slow, with the UI being completely unintuitive, and definitely feels like a relic of the past.

There's 1 more honorable mention. I can't say the name, but a certain utility company made use of an old-school java program for managing customer accounts. The interface wasn't great, but it wasn't difficult to use. Problem is that like so many java programs before it, it would randomly fail to repaint the screen at times leaving nothing but a 90's Windows-style grey window with no UI, or just crash with an out of memory exception. It'd sometimes do this even while it was idle. If that ain't a sign of a significant memory leak, I don't know what is.

I am using windows for many years but in these currently years ,i am using linux and my experience is good on it because its good for developers and using commands on it feels you great now, i am thinking that why i was using windows many years .
For my opinion if i compare linux and windows :
i recommend you to use linux if you are developer or loving code .

Alternatively, stick with Windows and just use WSL/WSL2 and have the best of both worlds for development, gaming, and just about anything else.

[Fencers]

The EA games launcher, Origin. I only managed to launch a game via Origin a handful of times.

[bloodkin]

my top 5 would be:


1. rockstar launcher
1. Mcafee/norton
3. EA origin
4. internet explorer (old version)
5. skype

just about everything in this is list is buggy, doesn't update or updates are usually a downgrade. IE existed only to download chrome/firefox. I could never say anything positive about origins, it's slow, buggy and you can never see any information you actually want, it's a type of software with the same 'everyone can use this' design philosophy behind it that makes it unusable if you want to do something a bit more technical/advanced than most users would,which makes it pure garbage. I do not want software to think for me, unless I specifically set it up to do so, and this goes also for skype.

But the worst piece of (modern) software I've had to use recently was the rockstar launcher. this piece of crap is so insultingly bad that it should never have been made in the first place. It's buggy, slow, updates are exclusively downgrades and it NEVER, EVER did what it was designed for. Every single time I tried to play RDR2 it bugged out, crashed or didn't start up at all. I tried several fixes and spent a significant amount of time on it because I really wanted to play RDR2, but it just didn't work. I eventually deleted RDR2 and the launcher out of frustration and will never buy another rockstar game again until I can run a game with just steam.

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ArcGIS

/10char

This can also be pretty bad, but at least if you know what you are doing, it does what it's supposed to do.

[Danuel]

Discord - eycandy piece of s***.

[Adam Jensen]

Norton Virus Scanner, legit was more then shit.

Norton Anti-Virus: When you'd rather have the virus.

[Cidzor]

Norton Anti-Virus: When you'd rather have the virus.

There is also this.

You could uninstall it, run the removal tools to clear up any other traces that they find, run one of those "super ultra zomg secure erase that makes 400 passes" on your hard drive, beat the shit out of the hard drive + the rest of your PC with a sledgehammer, run over what's left of that with a steamroller a few times, vacuum/bag up what's left of that, and launch it into the sun, and then build a new PC with a fresh OS install, and somehow, various Norton components would be there. It's like one of those horror movie monsters that won't die and keeps coming back no matter what you do to it.

[Queen of Hamsters]

Every single VPN that's failed to deliver what it promises. Last one: ExpressVpN.

Oh, and The Sims 3 was pretty damned terrible when it was new. For the pet expansion pack, they released an engine where you could preview the creation possibilities for pets.

Installed it, and it literally wiped all my saved data, all my created stuff, everything. Nevermind the crashes and overall just shitty performance. But man were they quick on releasing store shit...

[StillMcfuu]

A couple come to mind.

Windows ME was horrendous, it was highlighted by Windows 2000 and NT which were right around the same time and were fantastic.

IBM As400 (depends on its usage) its a pretty common back end that many of you probably use. I've seen it when its great, but my current company uses it for ticket and scheduling and its way over its head in this scenario, just a nightmare to deal with.

Older version of ATI's control panel equivalent. ATI/AMD have historical issues with drivers, but I remember their control panel program from 2010 ish was so bad it chased me away from ATI. It constantly crashed and if you were running something it would take that program with it 5 out of 10 times. It was built on .net Framework which had its own issues as well.

TeamSpeak, ny guild started raid with a guild that uses TS. I found it amusing that they used such an outdated program so I went along with it. That lasted for about 1 raid until we forced them to just use Discord. Discord has its own faults, but at least you aren't getting a sub standard experience from a program that still functions like a 2000 era Napster chat room, all while being spammed with messages about upgrading for better voice quality or concurrent users on the server (which I believe requires pay as well).

Honorable mentions:
ITunes: I had to use it maybe a year ago to back up my work phone. I remember constantly struggling with it years ago to get songs on my nano. Just a miserable program, I doubt its changed that much.

Old outlook/default windows mail.

[Sorshen]

I hated using Slack for work. Older versions of Microsoft Office apps get a honorable mention due to an endless stream of corrupted files over the years.

[Zergy]

Regard, it's a library management software used in school libraries here. It's incredibly outdated and looks like Windows 95.

[Soon-TM]

Yeah...I will +1 for McAfee. Panda still takes my #1 spot for shittiest anti-virus I've ever dealt with, but McAfee gets second place there. I think it generally comes pre-installed on Dell PC's, or at least it did for the handful of friends/relatives I've helped with PC problems (most of them either had a long-expired 90-day trial version, or they paid for a couple of years subscription when they started getting those "YOU ARE NO LONGER PROTECTED!!!111111" messages). Maybe the business/corporate version is better, but I can't say I'm a fan.

I'd give the "crappiest antivirus ever" badge to Avast. Seriously, screw that disgusting piece of slow ass spyware.

Oh, and the internal software used by BestBuy to document stuff like online orders, refunds and other stuff related to customer support. Buggy af and slooooooooooow as molasses.

[Gilvain]

definitely Norton, 100%

I absolutely loathe trying to remove it from new PCs for relatives...yeah, sadly I'm the one who always gets stuck with that task. Sigh.

iTunes was a good mention earlier in this thread, too. It used to drive me crazy until I completely swore off of it.

[schwarzkopf]

In the last 10 years - iTunes for Windows and Twitch for Windows.

That excludes programs I didn't use much because they were too bad to use.

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definitely Norton, 100%

Has been no reason to use Norton for several years... so at least you can dump that.

[cparle87]

There is also this.

You could uninstall it, run the removal tools to clear up any other traces that they find, run one of those "super ultra zomg secure erase that makes 400 passes" on your hard drive, beat the shit out of the hard drive + the rest of your PC with a sledgehammer, run over what's left of that with a steamroller a few times, vacuum/bag up what's left of that, and launch it into the sun, and then build a new PC with a fresh OS install, and somehow, various Norton components would be there. It's like one of those horror movie monsters that won't die and keeps coming back no matter what you do to it.

That made me laugh real hard irl.

[Gilvain]

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Has been no reason to use Norton for several years... so at least you can dump that.

Oh, trust me, I cleanse any PC with Norton on it with fire...I hate that so many pre-built PCs come with that shit pre-installed. That is the real issue.

I build my own PCs from scratch. However, I don't get that luxury when dealing with relatives who "just want something they can plug in" and don't really care...it's a shame.

[poptya]

Steam in the first month after it launched

[Tommi]

If any of you have worked for DSG ( PC World, Currys etc) in the UK, then it has to be Eclipse.

Fuck me that software was old when I worked there in 2007, and they still use it. Even worse was the fact that Business centre also had to use it, along with their own program. Doing a business sale was just a pain in the arse, coz you also had to go through Eclipse with the sales order. I eventually just stoped doing business sales.

[Zergin8r]

Citrix, <-- fuck this fucking ancient piece of crap shoved down our throats because some Big ISP's wanted to cut corners a decade ago.
Doesn't help that the majority of TC's are run by glorified accountants that think cost management = build one server in the arse end of fkn nowhere and link EVERYTHING AND THEIR MOTHER to it.

But seriously FUCK CITRIX.


you want to know how sucky this pos is...

It has it's own urban dictionary page

Citrix
Better known as "Shitrix", this thin client system lags like you wouldn't believe, and loses your data and locks your session if your program crashes. Which it does. Frequently. Can't even run the same program twice.

You often have to wait up to 10 seconds for keypresses to register when connected to the servers.
"I've got a crashed session on Citrix. Need admin to close it for me."

"'Shitrix' is lame, I want a proper system."

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Citrix

Yep this + avaya... early 90s style programs just to save a few $. Probably costs more to pay workers during the times it is down than to just upgrade honestly. I was probably paid 1 full day a week where I was waiting for either the ability to log in or just having the system generally crash / refuse to open other apps. Also once we moved to wfh this spring.... they sent us systems that also loaded windows through the server so if there was even a slight hiccup in the connection you were down 3-4 days till tech could reset your account.

[Bwonsamdi the Dead]

ITunes without a doubt. Total trash.

Also if you ever had a PC that had that McAfee shit all on it... my god total trash..

Seriously, fuck McAfee. Why is Microsoft even allowing that to be installed on their computers? Or ROG?

Just let me download memes in peace lol

[loadedaxe]

McAfee's and Nortons.