h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

"The point being, is the bad software in design or execution?"

If by design you refer to the quaint habit of one manufacturers' program subroutines overwriting/"sharing" common subroutines on other (or even the same!) manufacturers' programs, I definitely vote for design AND execution! I tried Earthlink (briefly) but had to give up, when I noticed it had mucked with not only the remnants of AOL I had not yet removed but with a couple of my applications as well. Earthlink said that AOL "always overwrites our software, remove it completely first"; (which came first, the chicken or the egg and other mysteries of life -- all I know is when I dumped Earthlink everything straightened out). Next time I have to do a reinstall I'll try them again, instead of AOL.

Don't even get me STARTED on my payroll program (which shall remain nameless, since you are all unlikely to be using it and I STILL HAVE TO!) and the fact that it won't share my machine with ANYTHING else! This I know for a fact was by the manufacturers' design, because they told me so!
"5 gigsHD and nothing else to do...." I've had to put up with that (After all, ya gotta pay the people, or they get really cranky). This means I have 2 machines on a desk designed for 1. Ah, progress.....

To add to the list of shame, a generic entry-

All Large systems, developed for government bodies, and Quasi Autonomous Non-Govenrment Organisations and the public sector in general, that are desisigned by committees, of non-technical people, executed by third party large developing houses (Ad**i**l, Lo**te**, EDS etc) who charge a stack, promise that everything the committee wants will happen and then fail to deliver. Examples in the UK - NIRS2 (National Insurances), Flight control software, CSA software, Housing benefit software, WAMS (Water quality software).

Often these packages are so bad they never actually are implemented, the systems roll back to the previous versions, new, smaller packages are implemented, legal action is started against developers, developers start legal action back.

The problem is that frequently these packages are designed to replace many older ones, each usually have one or two strong points and many weak ones. The new software is supposed to take all the good points and bin the bad, AND introduce new features as a when the commitee think of them - "Can it re-design the office layout, negotiate peace in the Middle East, work out the ultimate answer". As more and more "good" ideas" are thought of, more and more potential bugs slip in.

The end result-chaos.

Sometimes the best systems are those that are written in House by people who know the business, they start of small, and change almost daily to meet requirements, they slowly evolve- and before someone else mentions it, yes they usulaly have shocking version control, esoteric programming styles, and often impossible to maintain if the original writers leave, but they usually do the job and nothing more or less.

The package I wrote which I added to the list - mainly because of the shocking programming- is an example, bits were added when needed, bits came off that weren't used. It did the job. As long as I had control I could add and fix things within hours. Now it is 3rd party for support, even changing the spelling on a printout costs £1000s.



CH

Er, hi.

This isn't technically a piece of software, the game "Final Fantasy Mystic Quest" is the worst game ever. Sure, it had the American Final Fantasy logo on it, and the graphics were only marginally worse than those in "Final Fantasy 4" (released as 2 in America 'coz the Japanese 2 and 3 weren't), which was released in 1992(!), but the game was too zarking easy and the plot was flagrantly unoriginal, i.e. the young male hero goes out and must find the [insert number: 4] [insert what the Thingumies of Power are: Element Crystals] and save the world from [insert name of villain].

Hello,

I think the classic case of bad software design in the literature is the Therac-25. The machine was used to treat cancer patients. The software was written in sloppy assembly by a single programmer and poorly tested. Several race conditions in the code were later verified which (in the absence of hardware failsafes removed in that model) would sometimes trigger fatal dosages of radiation.

Sure, most Microsoft products have been atrociously bad at one time or another, but at least they haven't killed anybody.

Yours,
Jake

...Now I think we all feel kina pathetic.

Faulty engine management software for the Chinook helicopter 'Don't worry - we'll just blame the pilots'

Also, would anyone have any idea if the occasionally fatal problem with cruise control systems in various Ford cars is actually a hardware or software problem?

Haven't a clue.

But, y'know, Windows ME has its problems. For instance, when I customise a file type, it stops working if any part of the file's file path ("C:Windows\Desktop\Games\Star Fox\Item.bmp") has spaces in it, but it does when I choose "Change program" but I can't customise it when I do that; I can only "Revert" it to the previous thing.

Also, with the old version of Windows Paint, it asked you if you wanted to resize the image if something you were pasting was bigger than the current image; now it just automatically changes the size, regardless of whether you WANT to change the size or not.

I think the fact that it has taken me 3 attempts to add a post to this conversation speaks volumes.

Specifically, Windows ME would be wonderful if it was reliable, but it's not. I don't care how much functionality it has, if it won't function it's no use. When I used Dos on my first home PC all my software used to run as it was designed to do, and my computer virtually never crashed. I just had to take the trouble to find out how to use it. Now I'm lucky if my PC keeps going for a session without at least one crash.

Another whinge - railway software. I don't want to get too specific (there's an awful lot of software used on the railway), but it falls into two types. The first is incredibly ancient (like the sandwiches, I know, I've heard it before), usually totally unintuitive, but reliable. The second is modern, Windows friendly, powerful, intuitive, and falls over all the time. Personally, if I'm to do my job properly, I'm prepared to learn the system - it doesn't have to be intuitive, it has to be effective.

And am I the only person who turns off all the automatic correction in Word? It's very clever, but it doesn't know what I want.

I don't, because I haven't got Word. I use WordPerfect, and that thing's automatic corrections are helpful. Rare, but helpful.

Captain Kebab, I'm so with you in your whinge. Software that falls over several times a day - pointless waste of disk space and I loathe it. And I hate it trying to be intuitive because it flippin' well isn't. It never has a clue what I'm trying to do and I turn all the "helpful" little limbs o' satan off.

I would tell you about my accounts software but it'll upset me too much if I have to think about in now ... maybe tomorrow. Suffice to say a repulsive company whose name starts with an "S", ends with an "E" and has an "A" and a "G" somewhere in between, has bought out my accounts software company. I could cry. But I'm going to be brave and look for another accounts package.

[YK] Sega?

[YK's Brain] NO!!

Didn't want the mods to yank it YK's C. They sometimes do that if you mention a name. Was I too cagey?

*wow! iexplode appears to be about to let me post this *

My worst piece of software is Salford Plato, the fortran compiler we use at uni. Its maddening, not because it crashes, but because you'll select something, and use the menu/ctrl-c to copy. You then try to paste it somewhere else. It pastes something other than what you selected.
You select something. You press delete. Nothing happens.
If it finally does consent to copy/paste, you can bet it'll muck up the indentation... grrr...

Salamander, I think you WERE a bit too cagey.

Ok. Sage. Yuk.

I second that.