Products · Product
APL
Raised as a usability problem by 15 people on Hacker News over 13 years (2013–2025), in 14 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads in the last 5 years.
Every issue, all time, most people first
Needs special symbols that are impossible to type on standard keyboardsUnreviewed
20132026- Requires special characters not on standard keyboards, making it impractical to write2023-03-22
- Operators are non-ASCII, so typing them requires looking up a paper keyboard sheet2022-05-13
- APL answers use symbols that are unreadable to anyone who doesn't know the notation2014-11-14
Unreviewed issues were grouped by machine: Claude Haiku labelled each comment as a usability complaint, named what it's about and summed up the problem in a line, and a small model grouped similar problems. Nobody has checked them by hand. Expect mistakes.
The newest 14 complaints
- Installing the language is an absolute pain and it costs money2025-12-14
- Simple operations need many symbols of boilerplate for parsing and indexing, making code hard to read2025-04-25
- Requires special characters not on standard keyboards, making it impractical to write2023-03-22
- Dense symbols make code hard to understand and easy to confuse2022-11-17
- Must keep scrolling back and forth because the equation is not fixed2022-11-17
- Operators are non-ASCII, so typing them requires looking up a paper keyboard sheet2022-05-13
- Typing grade symbols requires remembering keyboard combos that map confusingly to symbols2020-08-18
- Myriad symbols overload working memory and finding keys slows programming2019-05-06
- No good learning path between beginner and expert levels; intermediate learning is a struggle2018-09-26
- Site is slow to interact with, especially during slide transitions2018-03-04
- Site needs JavaScript to show anything and is too slow to use2018-03-03
- Learners must memorize cryptic symbols on top of learning what each concept does2018-01-27
- APL answers use symbols that are unreadable to anyone who doesn't know the notation2014-11-14
- APL needs special symbols that are impossible to type on standard keyboards2013-02-26