5 ms·

Jira in particular is everything I dislike in software. It's feature bloated, overly complex and yet, despite the overwhelming complexity, it's hard to shape to

by jmfldn 5y ago

Jira in particular is everything I dislike in software. It's feature bloated, overly complex and yet, despite the overwhelming complexity, it's hard to shape to your needs very often. I want something much much simpler. Stick to the worse is better approach and adhere closer to the philosophy of doing one thing well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worse_is_better?wprov=sfla1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worse_is_better?wprov=sfla1

hinkley 5y ago
Atlassian is a blight. Developers are supposed to be informed consumers of software. Yet Atlassian applies an information hiding strategy to UX which means that their tools often have features that you simply do not know about because your role doesn’t allow that feature. How are we supposed to reason about the possible if people are hiding information? I have coworkers doing horrible manual processes or stuffing shell scripts into Bamboo tasks because they don’t know they just need to ask someone else to push a button for them or add them as admin permissions on a project. It creates a class of salty user who go around doing things like calling you a blight in public. Know your audience. UX != DevEx.
- teachrdan 5y ago
  I got a recruiting email from Atlassian once. I basically responded, "Have you ever used your product?"
  - hinkley 5y ago
    I’ve had one boss discover that “passionate” can be a bad thing when the passionate person is professionally embarrassed by the product they’re working on. I hope not to do that again.
2bitlobster 5y ago
Totally agree. Enjoying Clubhouse.io for that reason.
nickspicer1993 5y ago
I'm hesitant to post the link as it's still very alpha, but I am developing a Jira alternative for exactly this reason! Check out https://tahsk.com https://tahsk.com and let me know what you think I'd love some initial feedback.
- politician 5y ago
  Some initial feedback: Your homepage demo launches with someone entering Task #1. Task #1 isn't the problem, the problem is Task #5509 opened yesterday child of Task #803 opened two years ago and subsequently deferred by people who no longer work at the company who pointed to a planned technology project that has since been cancelled. Everyone does Task #1 fantastically. Task #1 is easy, it's greenfield by definition. How does your solution scale to Task #5509 when things have gone pear-shaped and there are legacy considerations that demand consideration?
  - nickspicer1993 5y ago
    Yes very true and thanks for taking a look! :) The idea here is the "Roadmap" view you're seeing only shows tickets which are not completed. You might have Phase 1 -> Bugs (e.g. #803) opened 2 years ago and not closed if you choose to organise them that way but the Task #5509 comes, get completed then is removed from the view. Still playing with how to scale projects across multiple departments and show only the tasks your team cares about though, which would make that view even smaller. Right now I'm thinking either by being able to filter on any single Task or just use the existing Labels. Thinking about how to do this without bloating the language with Teams or Squads etc. though is interesting.
politician 5y ago
Jira is expertly designed to do one thing well: close sales It ticks all of the boxes and more boxes than its competitors in customers' managements' requirements spreadsheet, it's priced to sell well, there is an ecosystem and a marketplace, and the sales demos show that all of this works smoothly. We should be praising Atlassian for following the UNIX philosophy, not condemning it.
gregmac 5y ago
It's unfortunate because jira can be quite good: the key is minimal restrictions, and building out super-flexible workflow that allows almost any state transitions. It took me a couple years of using it with admin access to figure that out, though. It also took using something significantly worse to realize what I missed - and prior to that I was not exactly a fan. Jira's JQL is it's superpower, at least for finding and summarizing stuff, though it is better if issues are categorized well. The key to that is making sure it's not actively hostile to your users. Unfortunately the defaults and the way the admin tools enable BOFH-syndrome make this an uphill battle, which is why so many jira installs are bad. Now that said, the speed, stupid markup syntax and some other things still would make me do a good look for others prior to starting something on jira again. But jira can be decent, and there is much, much worse.
qudat 5y ago
> Jira in particular is everything I dislike in software. It's feature bloated, overly complex and yet, despite the overwhelming complexity, it's hard to shape to your needs very often. Author here. I totally agree with you. Not only that, we purchase the software because it sells us on being able to fit the needs of the organization but at the end of the day most of the companies I worked for only use sprints successfully.
jrockway 5y ago
How do they make it so slow, is my question. I've seen my computer do physics simulations synchronized with 11 other players, updating my screen 360 times a second and my headphones 48,000 times a second. But then JIRA takes 5 seconds to say "you have 3 bugs open". How is it even possible? Like what code do you type in to make it run so slowly? It boggles my mind.
- justinpage 5y ago
  I've asked myself the same question many times. I wonder if Jira inevitably becomes slower, overtime, as customers add configuration they deem necessary. Jira, having multiple options available, will happily accommodate it without considering optimization as a boundary. A vanilla instance of Jira, more than likely, outperforms any custom configuration a customer will eventually apply. But that's just one theory.

by jmfldn 5y ago

hinkley 5y ago

Atlassian is a blight. Developers are supposed to be informed consumers of software. Yet Atlassian applies an information hiding strategy to UX which means that their tools often have features that you simply do not know about because your role doesn’t allow that feature. How are we supposed to reason about the possible if people are hiding information? I have coworkers doing horrible manual processes or stuffing shell scripts into Bamboo tasks because they don’t know they just need to ask someone else to push a button for them or add them as admin permissions on a project. It creates a class of salty user who go around doing things like calling you a blight in public. Know your audience. UX != DevEx.

teachrdan 5y ago
I got a recruiting email from Atlassian once. I basically responded, "Have you ever used your product?"
- hinkley 5y ago
  I’ve had one boss discover that “passionate” can be a bad thing when the passionate person is professionally embarrassed by the product they’re working on. I hope not to do that again.

2bitlobster 5y ago

Totally agree. Enjoying Clubhouse.io for that reason.

nickspicer1993 5y ago

I'm hesitant to post the link as it's still very alpha, but I am developing a Jira alternative for exactly this reason! Check out https://tahsk.com https://tahsk.com and let me know what you think I'd love some initial feedback.

politician 5y ago
Some initial feedback: Your homepage demo launches with someone entering Task #1. Task #1 isn't the problem, the problem is Task #5509 opened yesterday child of Task #803 opened two years ago and subsequently deferred by people who no longer work at the company who pointed to a planned technology project that has since been cancelled. Everyone does Task #1 fantastically. Task #1 is easy, it's greenfield by definition. How does your solution scale to Task #5509 when things have gone pear-shaped and there are legacy considerations that demand consideration?
- nickspicer1993 5y ago
  Yes very true and thanks for taking a look! :) The idea here is the "Roadmap" view you're seeing only shows tickets which are not completed. You might have Phase 1 -> Bugs (e.g. #803) opened 2 years ago and not closed if you choose to organise them that way but the Task #5509 comes, get completed then is removed from the view. Still playing with how to scale projects across multiple departments and show only the tasks your team cares about though, which would make that view even smaller. Right now I'm thinking either by being able to filter on any single Task or just use the existing Labels. Thinking about how to do this without bloating the language with Teams or Squads etc. though is interesting.

politician 5y ago

Jira is expertly designed to do one thing well: close sales It ticks all of the boxes and more boxes than its competitors in customers' managements' requirements spreadsheet, it's priced to sell well, there is an ecosystem and a marketplace, and the sales demos show that all of this works smoothly. We should be praising Atlassian for following the UNIX philosophy, not condemning it.

gregmac 5y ago

It's unfortunate because jira can be quite good: the key is minimal restrictions, and building out super-flexible workflow that allows almost any state transitions. It took me a couple years of using it with admin access to figure that out, though. It also took using something significantly worse to realize what I missed - and prior to that I was not exactly a fan. Jira's JQL is it's superpower, at least for finding and summarizing stuff, though it is better if issues are categorized well. The key to that is making sure it's not actively hostile to your users. Unfortunately the defaults and the way the admin tools enable BOFH-syndrome make this an uphill battle, which is why so many jira installs are bad. Now that said, the speed, stupid markup syntax and some other things still would make me do a good look for others prior to starting something on jira again. But jira can be decent, and there is much, much worse.

qudat 5y ago

> Jira in particular is everything I dislike in software. It's feature bloated, overly complex and yet, despite the overwhelming complexity, it's hard to shape to your needs very often. Author here. I totally agree with you. Not only that, we purchase the software because it sells us on being able to fit the needs of the organization but at the end of the day most of the companies I worked for only use sprints successfully.

jrockway 5y ago

How do they make it so slow, is my question. I've seen my computer do physics simulations synchronized with 11 other players, updating my screen 360 times a second and my headphones 48,000 times a second. But then JIRA takes 5 seconds to say "you have 3 bugs open". How is it even possible? Like what code do you type in to make it run so slowly? It boggles my mind.

justinpage 5y ago
I've asked myself the same question many times. I wonder if Jira inevitably becomes slower, overtime, as customers add configuration they deem necessary. Jira, having multiple options available, will happily accommodate it without considering optimization as a boundary. A vanilla instance of Jira, more than likely, outperforms any custom configuration a customer will eventually apply. But that's just one theory.