I always thought the older RS500 was so easy to use and solid, I feel like I am cheating when using it.
The new licensing is insane and rife with stoppage as the default condition is NO.
But if think the OP AB experience is bad, I had to use windows 7 64 bit with Step 7 v5.4
Yeah.
Then WinnCC
And all of this 3 weeks of pain while being hounded by a project with a 3 month start delay while being held to the original ship date.
Oh yeah and of course we were being abused by several in house custom softwares that we made to help save time and money. All of which required several weeks more to use than the available item on the market.
Just because some guy CAN make an HMI in VB^ doesn't mean it will be better , faster or cheaper than just using an available HMI software.
And those spiffy code generators that everyone is in love with these days.............
If you want to push a button and generate thousands of line of functional code, make sure the damned thing works before you push it out to 20 programmers and require them to fight it, I mean benefit from it.
And ALL this while fighting Step7 and Win 7 64 bit.
Once I had all the bugs worked out so I could get started, the spec changes, I re-write, then the spec changes again.
Then the deadline looms.
Then it is all a super big deal...............
Late nights, weekends, .................then the whole project is put on hold as if it never mattered.
There is never enough insanity in management.
The challenge is to remain silent until one more payday passes.
Then try to keep doing that.