techtonik / suxx

:woman_facepalming: Curated list of software design failures

"When it started out, it was an awful lot of fun." (c) Alan Perlis

"A depressive reminder that the world is still not a better place."

Contents

• Bash

• C++

• GCC

• Mailman

• Python

  • jinja2
  • python.org
  • python 3
  • stdlib.re
  • virtualenv

• tar

• Ubuntu PPA

Bash

bash suxx, because:

$ cat test.sh
sh -c "exit 102"
echo $?
echo Done.
$ bash test.sh 
102
Done.
$ echo $?
0

it doesn't fail on errors.

C++

C++ suxx, because

You can not simply override fields from parent class like you do in Python:

class Driver(object):
  name = "Unknown"
  def __init__(self):
    print(self.name)

class SpecificDriver(Driver):
  name = "Specific"
  def __init__(self):
    super(SpecificDriver, self).__init__()

Driver()
SpecificDriver()

• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/36964242/access-overridden-field-in-constructor-without-templates
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/37360302/c-cant-access-child-property-from-parent
• https://gist.github.com/techtonik/ce85e2e5e1773e02f91cb8e1156d049a

GCC

gcc 4.x suxx, because:

$ gcc main.c
$ ls main*
main.c

Mailman

mailman 2.x mailing list software suxx, because

• it doesn't have search button for its archives
• you can't reply to the thread if you're not already subscribed
• you can't subscribe only to threads you're interested in
• if you are not subscribed, there is no guaranteed mail delivery because it is not clear if you address will be added to CC

Python

Jinja 2

• Doesn't provide ability to list all template variables pallets/jinja#174

python.org as a community site

• developers don't care about people who are learning web development (python/pythondotorg#912)
• proprietary owned by PSF (there is no sign that it is open source)
• code is not reusable because of verbose license with no owner
• doesn't credit people who contributed to it (everything links to PSF)
• there is no understanding of ux in development involvement

Python 3

• it suxx, because it managed to ship venv module with all suxx facts from virtualenv chapter below
• it suxx, because for some reason binary data is now math (integers)

line = b'12345'
if line[0] == b'1':
  print('python 2')
else:
  print('python 3')

stdlib.re

$ matches before \n, but not before \r\n. It suxx that docs for $ don't mention that this created problems on Windows stdout processing and files read in text mode (default behaviour, which suxx as well).

virtualenv

virtualenv (python-virtualenv) suxx, because

• you can't just login and logout from the env, you need to activate it
• you can't just refence sctipt in virtualenv - you need platform-aware conditional to choose bin/ on Linux and Scripts\ on Windows

tar

tar.gz, tar.* archive formats suxx for extracting random files. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tar_(computing)#Random_access

Ubuntu PPA

Ubuntu PPA suxx, because

• you can't just install inkscape from https://launchpad.net/~inkscape.dev/+archive/ubuntu/stable.
• PPA launchpad pages like https://launchpad.net/~inkscape.dev/+archive/ubuntu/stable just don't have a straightforward single visible command needed to the istall the stuff right away (launchpad#1458513)

Competitors

• https://wiki.theory.org/YourLanguageSucks

suxx's Issues

History

The original name of this idea was suxx-tracker to track and fix issues. But not all issues can be fixed. Either because it will break backward compatibility, or because are developers are not motivated, or died struggling to keep themselves alive.

Here is the original description from the front page. As you may see, it bears little of cultural or education value, i.e. it suxx.

---

"When it started out, it was an awful lot of fun." (c) Alan Perlis

suxx-tracker suxx, because

• its name is ugly in both lower and Capitalized Case
• it is too verbose and too concise at the same time
• it lacks structure that can be automatically processed
  * there is no permalinks
• you need registration and be familiar with GitHub

---

To lessen the maintenance and ideological burden on a single maintainer, the project name was demoted of proud suffix -tracker to just plain suxx name, which is basically an anti-matter of awesome.

argparse output suxx

$ python -m wheel
usage: __main__.py [-h]
                   {keygen,sign,unsign,verify,unpack,install,install-scripts,convert,version,help}
                   ...
__main__.py: error: too few arguments

It should be at least:

$ python -m wheel
usage: python -m wheel [command]

commands:
    keygen                 - bla-bla-bla
    sign
    unsign
    verify
    unpack
    install
    install-scripts
    convert
    version
    help
                   ...
wheel: error: too few arguments

python-annoying

http://skorokithakis.github.io/django-annoying/