Finding the Worst Documentation

[MrAw3som3]

I'm doing a project for school and I'm looking for the WORST technical documentation (this can be for hardware components or software). Essentially instructions or documentation that is hard to follow or are just not good looking. If you can provide a link to the document or photos.

 

Thanks!

[vanished]

I have seen professional engineering documents in comic sans, I kid you not.

 

Also, found this in a folder once.  Rather than have the files, it just had a PDF that said:

 

>not available electronically

Last time I checked a CD was electronic but alright.

[Urishima]

The worst kind is the one that doesn't exist.

 

If you want to hear horror-stories, ask r/sysadmin that question.

[Drak3]

1 minute ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

Last time I checked a CD was electronic but alright.

Incorrect, Mr. Vickers.

 

A CD itself is a form of optical media. The CD player is the electronic device used to read this form of optical media.

 

See me after class.

Just now, Urishima said:

The worst kind is the one that doesn't exist.

 

If you want to hear horror-stories, ask r/sysadmin that question.

[vanished]

Just now, Drak3 said:

Incorrect, Mr. Vickers.

 

A CD itself is a form of optical media. The CD player is the electronic device used to read this form of optical media.

 

See me after class.

lol you know what I mean though.  Obviously if the data is available in the form of files on a CD (ie, electronically), it could just as well be hosted on the share folder like all the rest of it.  Why they chose to do this is beyond me.

[Drak3]

Just now, Ryan_Vickers said:

lol you know what I mean though.  Obviously if the data is available in the form of files on a CD (ie, electronically), it could just as well be hosted on the share folder like all the rest of it.  Why they chose to do this is beyond me.

They gotta scam cheat extort get more money out of you when you lose the disc, provided they give you one in the first place.

[Urishima]

Just now, Drak3 said:

I am 100 percent serious. Ever come to a place where you are supposed to work with an old system, but the documentation hasn't been updated since Augustus was in power, if it even exists?

[Drak3]

Just now, Urishima said:

I am 100 percent serious. Ever come to a place where you are supposed to work with an old system, but the documentation hasn't been updated since Augustus was in power, if it even exists?

[vanished]

2 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

They gotta scam cheat extort get more money out of you when you lose the disc, provided they give you one in the first place.

This is exactly the reason we normally copy everything on the disks they gave us to the shared drive as soon as we got them.

[tarfeef101]

Almost any puppet implementation of some software... Ppl just make them but forget that I don't have time to dig through their source to figure out how they set it up...

[Drak3]

Just now, Ryan_Vickers said:

This is exactly the reason we normally copy everything on the disks they gave us to the shared drive as soon as we got them.

Yohoho.

[MrAw3som3]

3 minutes ago, Urishima said:

I am 100 percent serious. Ever come to a place where you are supposed to work with an old system, but the documentation hasn't been updated since Augustus was in power, if it even exists?

This sounds exactly like what I'm looking for. Have any specific examples available?

[paddy-stone]

Pity it has to be computer related, you'd be golden with ANY ikea product ever pretty much otherwise

 

 

[Arika]

I'm sure there's a BuzzFeed article of "top ten worst technical documents". It's BuzzFeed so you know it's shit

[MrAw3som3]

3 minutes ago, paddy-stone said:

Pity it has to be computer related, you'd be golden with ANY ikea product ever pretty much otherwise

 

 

Originally it was anything for the assignment, but it turned into your field of study instead. Mine happens to be computer software and hardware.

[Hiko]

The build instructions for the Lian-Li T60 pitstop test bench are amazingly, hilariously awful. Even people like PCPER and paul of paul's hardware screwed the build up. Even i mounted the bottom plate upside down the first time and i got lucky. And i'm a former mechanic/general engineer with 25+ years experience as a hobbyist building complex and fiddly things like competition RC cars, computers, PCBs, etc. Literally all they had to do was print an exploded diagram to make them 10000x better.  https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B4RBHFLCArMvZVluN292eXItck0

 

Ikea instructions are actually really good. I can even assemble their products without swearing once. Which is amazing. 

[MrAw3som3]

3 minutes ago, Hiko said:

The build instructions for the Lian-Li T60 pitstop test bench are amazingly, hilariously awful. Even people like PCPER and paul of paul's hardware screwed the build up. Even i mounted the bottom plate upside down the first time and i got lucky. And i'm a former mechanic/general engineer with 25+ years experience as a hobbyist building complex and fiddly things like competition RC cars, computers, PCBs, etc. Literally all they had to do was print an exploded diagram to make them 10000x better.  https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B4RBHFLCArMvZVluN292eXItck0

 

Ikea instructions are actually really good. I can even assemble their products without swearing once. Which is amazing. 

Ha! This is great - you can't even tell what screw they are using. Thanks!! Looking for some software examples too.

[Tsuki]

should see some of the cabling documentation for my work.

its godawful.   i'd link some, but its all internal docs for proprietary bullshit

[MrAw3som3]

3 minutes ago, Tsuki said:

should see some of the cabling documentation for my work.

its godawful.   i'd link some, but its all internal docs for proprietary bullshit

Darn, I'm sure that's the case in most corporate settings.

[Tsuki]

Just now, MrAw3som3 said:

Darn, I'm sure that's the case in most corporate settings.

some of our stuff is great. and we're in the process of fixing most of it. but yea.. some of it is on an old system that was shit back then, and its just as shit now.

[Urishima]

7 hours ago, MrAw3som3 said:

This sounds exactly like what I'm looking for. Have any specific examples available?

Well, none that I can post. It's all work related, internal documentation.

[LAwLz]

Sadly I can't show it, but a large client I work with used to have all their IP documentation in Word documents.

They had massive word documents with nothing but tables in them. It drove me nuts. Now they have moved over to using Excel files which is not perfect, but hell of a lot better than Word files.