Arduino IDE

Raised as a usability problem by 23 people on Hacker News over 12 years (2014–2025), in 18 threads.

People raised many different problems with Arduino IDE, but no single problem has yet been raised by 3 people in 3 different months and threads.

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 25 complaints

Stuck with single-file projects; library resolution is much worse than proper build systems2025-12-15
No gradual path to advanced use; stuck with single-file projects and poor library resolution2025-12-15
The IDE is described as basically unusable, with no specific problem given2025-12-15
Configuration must be tweaked through UI settings instead of plain text files2025-11-19
Errors only show after compiling, and finding functions means manual text search2025-10-07
IDE tooling is terrible and frustrating for professional developers2024-12-16
Edit-compile-run cycle takes minutes because there are no incremental builds2024-12-16
Endless useless popups get in the way while programming2024-01-04
Pushes a copy-paste workflow, and tabs don't keep code modular2022-12-21
Slow indexing makes IDE unusable; can't tell if upload or compile has finished2022-09-29
Recompiles all code every time, which is infuriatingly slow2022-09-29
Cmd+W closes the whole window instead of the current tab, surprising users2022-09-28
IDE is very slow to start, open files, and recompiles everything on each verify2022-09-28
Can't see what gets built; dependencies scattered across global package paths2022-01-25
Often freezes the whole laptop, forcing a Ctrl+Alt+Del interrupt2021-01-17
IDE is buggy and lacks needed features, leaving users stuck2020-01-07
Arduino C++ extensions are confusing and the editor lacks tooltips2019-04-02
Author dislikes the IDE, though it is so underpowered that getting lost is hard2017-10-31
Hard to use, though it still gets beginners started quickly2017-10-31
Unusable on high-DPI screens because it lacks high DPI support2017-07-21
UI is unreadably tiny on a high-resolution laptop screen2017-01-27
Mbed's online IDE is slow, and Yotta is command line only2016-02-21
Interface is terrible and only suited to tiny programs, becoming barely adequate as projects grow2016-01-08
Building and uploading doesn't save edits, so work is lost after a crash2014-08-04
IDE is awful and hasn't improved since release2014-01-31