Doesn't have a linux version
Is missing 90% of new commercially available parts
Doesn't have a method of easily adding those parts (except manually, 1 by 1) (as far as I know)
Has garbage UI (you can only undo 4 times) (adding or removing a single component can easily use up more than 4 moves)
Inconsistent simulations (making the sims work feels like trying to appease a capricious God to not curse you with famine)

The free open source software (qucs-studio) seems to have none of these problems, though I have barely used it.

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[–] Owl@hexbear.net 20 points 6 days ago (1 children)

The stagnation in all forms of professional software is mind-boggling. We have the same basic categories of applications as we did in the early 2000s, sometimes with more bells and whistles. These applications are highly profitable, yet there's still a bizarre gap in investment in new ones. A bias inflicted by a system where investment is directed not by tool-users, but by people who own things for a living.

It makes me wonder whether other tools I'm less close to, like construction equipment, have such stagnation as well.

[–] sodium_nitride@hexbear.net 9 points 6 days ago (1 children)

It's even more frustrating that there is so much stagnation for professional software. Like, consumer applications have so much UI design that it's treating you like you are its little baby child. Then you have professional software which treats you as if you were the parent and the software is the child throwing a tantrum.

A bias inflicted by a system where investment is directed not by tool-users, but by people who own things for a living.

There is not a chance in hell that the designers of multisim casually use multisim.

[–] RangeFourHarry@hexbear.net 3 points 6 days ago

Babysitter Salesforce vs Wild West SAP

[–] Huitzilopochtli@hexbear.net 13 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Of course it's a National Instruments product lmao

[–] sodium_nitride@hexbear.net 9 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Seems like the company has a reputation in Hexbear. What did they do? Disrespect the beans?

[–] Huitzilopochtli@hexbear.net 9 points 6 days ago

They make a ton of specialized industrial and electronics shit and a ton of niche professional software and are extremely money hungry. Most of their products have the same experience as this one.

[–] Pavlichenko_Fan_Club@hexbear.net 7 points 6 days ago

I know a handful of former NI people. They universally had bad things to say.

[–] engineer@hexbear.net 12 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Admittedly I have fond memories of multisim but that was over a decade ago and it is exactly unchanged since then.

[–] sodium_nitride@hexbear.net 9 points 6 days ago

it is exactly unchanged since then.

Soon enough, a license for multisim will be like a family heirloom that will be passed down across the generations.

[–] ButtBidet@hexbear.net 12 points 6 days ago (1 children)

My god, the UI looks like it was made in Visual Basic 2010.

[–] sodium_nitride@hexbear.net 13 points 6 days ago

The UI also works as smoothly as a hobbyist project from the 2010s

[–] TrustedFeline@hexbear.net 11 points 6 days ago (2 children)

But does it have proprietary file formats that lock you into using the product? What about a subscription service that locks you into a system where the TOS could change every month?

[–] sodium_nitride@hexbear.net 13 points 6 days ago

But does it have proprietary file formats that lock you into using the product?

Oh yes, obviously. Why wouldn't it?

[–] Huitzilopochtli@hexbear.net 12 points 6 days ago

The best is when they intentionally break the file format in minor ways every version, so that you can always import older files but the second you open them in the newer version say goodbye to any backwards compatibility.

[–] Keld@hexbear.net 8 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

There are several models of medical instruments where deleting files is such a hassle no one ever does it, the files just lay on the machine until the storage fills up, then some poor asshole has to delete each file one by one because you can't just wipe the memory. There are medical students who have spent almost entire shifts at hospitals just navigating to individual files with the worst interfaces known to man and clicking delete over and over and over again.

[–] sodium_nitride@hexbear.net 3 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Can they just add a command line interface?

[–] Keld@hexbear.net 3 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

I bet they could if literally anyone in any part of the process after this thing has been delivered knew anything about computers.

Also one these things you navigate with a trackball and a touchpad and it can't connect to any other machine except through a weird proprietary cable that I don't think connects to anything with a keyboard. Actually I don't even think the touchpad lets you do anything except scroll up and down and press enter more slowly than the trackball actually.

[–] sodium_nitride@hexbear.net 5 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Peak software design.

[–] Keld@hexbear.net 4 points 6 days ago

There's also the other end of the spectrum, where I have like 6 apps on my phone that just log me on a website. Two of them log me on to the same website but just different parts of it.

[–] MizuTama@hexbear.net 7 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (2 children)

The FOSS sphere is pretty nice. More and more of my stuff is running off of self-hosted FOSS software lately. Holdouts are my workstation OS and email because I'm really lazy and those require a bunch of boring work

[–] CptKrkIsClmbngThMntn@hexbear.net 9 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Same. I can understand why professionals are locked into particular (shitty) tools and that certain features are always going to land in the FOSS equivalent later, but now I'm in deep enough, I:

a) have toys that make most people jealous (stuff like Jellyfin and the *arr stack, my Calibre and airsonic libraries, or a personal website), and

b) can be a jack of all trades in ways that would be way out of economic reach for those who assume that FOSS just isn't good enough. Need someone to make an amateur photo edit, put together a video, or record a quick meme song? I can do all that because I've been able to afford the price ($0) of having those tools around for a decade and learning my way around them at my own pace.

[–] MizuTama@hexbear.net 2 points 4 days ago

Same. I can understand why professionals are locked into particular (shitty) tools and that certain features are always going to land in the FOSS equivalent later, but now I'm in deep enough, I:

Also running the arr suite, jellyfin with torrenting and Usenet here. I spent a lot upfront but frankly, I'll probably never have to buy a subscription service again outside of music (I've been too lazy to setup music automatically). I want to get into ripping my own content from blue-ray discs etc but have not had the motivation to work on any personal projects lately

[–] sodium_nitride@hexbear.net 6 points 6 days ago

For me, my university kind of locks me into using a lot of proprietary software

[–] Llituro@hexbear.net 6 points 6 days ago

national instruments is a disgusting embarrassment whose products don't work

[–] himeneko@hexbear.net 5 points 6 days ago (1 children)

it looks like LTSpice but worse

[–] himeneko@hexbear.net 4 points 6 days ago

qucs-studio

actually this looks really good

[–] wetbeardhairs@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 6 days ago

I'm stuck using NI stuff because their hardware is good. It's not fun. But it pays the bills so I'll deal with it I guess.

[–] scathliath@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 6 days ago

Yeah, between working today I have been fighting youtube being unable to tell when my adblocker is paused or not and utterly being unable to scrape it's own shit enough together to give me ads on the PC.