IME, Jira makes development tracking easy, at first.

But then, when software developers realize how much Jira gets in their way, the good ones do their best to avoid using it. Which results in Jira being a great tool for middle-managers to query a very stale database.

Or it becomes a performance piece that mostly says what the developers want to say, rather than the truth.

Not to mention how horrible Confluence is, which is a product I can't believe how strongly it's advertised as a life saver. Any editor I've tried is way better. (Every time I have to "insert macro > other macros > code > choose title > choose syntax highlighter" just to document some code it just makes my life more miserable.)

I agree Confluence is a pain to use, and pages with a lot of info or a lot of macros can been nearly impossible to edit because of how slow they are.

On your point about inserting code blocks you should be able to type `/code` and hit enter. If you’re not using the newer version or a page with the new editor, I think you type `{` instead of `/` but it’s been a while since I’ve used that one.

In the old issue view, you can type

    {code:java}
    ... some java code
    {code}

to mark off a code block, and to use Java syntax highlighting (for example).

That's when you are editing in "raw" mode, which, incidentally, I haven't been able to discover how to do in the New Issue View (which I finally discovered how to turn off, that is to say, switch back to Old Issue View, globally -- it's under account settings, yay! The "New Issue View" is a lab setting you can turn OFF.)

You can also change an issue from the new view to the old view by selecting "switch to old view" from the More menu (three dots).

I have to say, it's painful using Atlassian tools after having worked with GitLab for 5 years... I miss being able to use standard markdown in Issues, and editing the Wiki using Git/vi instead of in a text box in a Web browser, with strange markup.

So what is like Jira but good?

I use jira at work and I like it.

But our use case is maybe more limited/liberal. For us it is:

1) list tasks to do and how tasks are linked

2) archive discussion about issues and integrates with butbucket (so in commit it will link to ticket to read about why something was done; similarly from issue discussion I can see the relevant commits; this also goes well with history either by looking to linked issues or blaming in git and getting issues that resulted in the commits)

3) enables pointing other devs to something (I did some partial task, need help, I assign or cc someone else, they contribute to the issue as appropriate and then hand it back). Helps ensure all relevant discussion is centralized and persisted.

What we don’t do is use it as an explicit performance/formal sprint tool... there is no middle manager questioning me about something I wrote/didn’t write in jira. is this where people start to hate it?

My experience with bug trackers is that people hate them no matter which one you choose. The infinite list of stuff you know is broken or sub-optimal crushes the spirit. (Jira is particularly bad, because it is slow and complicated, but switching to simpler tools doesn't make that underlying problem go away.)

When people complain about bug trackers, they probably need a new outlook on work. They need to aggressively prioritize tasks. They need to be in a mental state where they're happy working on the highest priority thing, not the most interesting thing. You can't get there by buying a new tool for $9.99 per user per month. You probably need a vacation.

At my last job, we switched from Jira to Github Issues to Asana. Each tool had the same problems -- bugs were filed faster than they were fixed. I am personally okay with that -- I know that most of these things will never be done, but it's nice to park the idea somewhere. But to others, it's crushing, and although people will complain that they don't like Jira's UI, what they really hate is that realization that they will never "finish".

Ah yes the engineering nirvana where no-one is a manager and targets don't exist..

Aka a well-funded startup with no traction

I think its influence on the organisation is what makes it hated. Where I work we spend so much effort and time setting up filters and rules, creating dashboards and health checks. The CTO becomes irate on slack if a sprint is started without all tasks having story points.

Whenever someone suggests we use another tool, it's immediately rejected unless it can be integrated with the atlassian suite. So if we want to run some kind of vote for understanding how our technical debt affects different parts of the project we can't use a specialist (free) Condorcet app, such as this https://civs.cs.cornell.edu/, we have to use jira's voting system.

You'd probably do great with Gitlab then. It lacks some features of JIRA but the ones it lacks are mostly what you don't use. But it's interface and simplicity is a joy compared to JIRA. Literally everything is keyboard driven via markdown and built in actions in text. The API is simple and crazy powerful.

NB: Not associated with Gitlab the company in any way.

In my experience, you can do all that on github directly, with the benefit that everything's closer to the code. I presume Bitbucket has comparable functionality. Jira is just another tool on top that doesn't add anything unless you're doing the perf tracking bit outside the team.

I use github as well (but never just bitbucket), I feel jira provides a better coordination/overview functionality, although I agree in most ways they are convergent. Part of it is our jira covers multiples related projects/sub teams/independent repos in ways I don’t think github can do seamlessly (but I never worked on a big project on github so maybe it is just my limitation)

Clubhouse.io

Jira recently overhauled their UI to make it more similar to Clubhouse, but it still isn't as good. Jira is still slow and buggy. Clubhouse also has seamless integration with Github which makes it feel like I am using GitHub issues when tagging PRs, etc. There is also a BitBucket integration, but haven't used it. To me Clubhouse does something that no other similar tool does: make PMs and engineers happy.

Pivotal Tracker is okay.

Agreed.

Jira can do many things. Or so I’m told. I just don’t think it helps me as a dev.

I think for the most part it works well, it just has frustrating quirks like sometimes not being able to save comments (what the hell?) or attach images. Having said that though, the user experience is also really laggy... I think if it was faster it would be less frustrating

If you think Jira is bad you should see Remedy.

I still have flashbacks to the year I spent with Remedy.

And then my current company picked up SalesForce.... It's like relieving the horror.

JIRA is terrible to manage and it's permissions system is rubbish but it does issue management okay.