COBOL

Raised as a usability problem by 8 people on Hacker News over 7 years (2017–2023), in 6 threads.

People raised many different problems with COBOL, 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 8 complaints

Syntax is verbose and awkward to read and write2023-09-05
Steep learning curve and dry, hard-to-use documentation for new users2022-09-13
Third-party extensions built into the language are confusing for new users to understand2022-09-13
Language is verbose and inconsistent, with keywords randomly added for readability2021-09-09
Legacy data entry needed 40 screens and 3-6 months of training for the workflow2020-04-11
Control flow jumps to a tiny period, hard to spot in all-caps code2019-07-17
Declaring a variable requires cryptic, awkward syntax like level numbers and PIC clauses2017-10-27
Tracing variable changes through 10k-line files with copy-pasted, dependent code is painful2017-10-27