Products · Pattern or everyday thing
Code blocks
Raised as a usability problem by 23 people on Hacker News over 19 years (2008–2026), in 24 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
Quoted code is hard to read on mobile and with screen readersUnreviewed
20082026- Code no longer wraps on mobile, forcing horizontal scrolling to read it2026-07-24
- Code blocks make quoted text hard to read on mobile, narrow screens, and with screen readers2020-08-05
- Code blocks don't wrap, forcing sideways scrolling on mobile devices2020-06-07
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 24 complaints
- Code no longer wraps on mobile, forcing horizontal scrolling to read it2026-07-24
- Code blocks become unreadable when dark mode is enabled on the page2026-02-16
- Selecting and copying text in a field with a copy button requires extra intention from the user2025-09-24
- Double-clicking a line to copy includes an unwanted trailing newline2021-05-07
- Code samples render as black on grey and are almost impossible to read in Firefox on Mac2020-09-30
- Code blocks make quoted text hard to read on mobile, narrow screens, and with screen readers2020-08-05
- Code blocks don't wrap, forcing sideways scrolling on mobile devices2020-06-07
- Code blocks require horizontal scrolling to read on mobile, making them unreadable2020-05-31
- Code blocks used for quotes are hard to read on mobile, narrow screens, and with screen readers2020-04-04
- Code text is hard to read even with a slightly enlarged font2020-04-02
- Quoted text in code blocks is impossible to read on mobile2019-12-31
- Code blocks are unreadable on non-ultrawide screens, requiring horizontal scrolling2019-07-12
- Code mode stops text wrapping on phones, truncating lines after about 20-40 characters2019-06-18
- Quotations in code blocks are hard to read on mobile2019-02-10
- Code blocks for quotes are very hard to read on mobile2019-02-08
- Code block formatting is impossible to read on mobile2018-11-15
- Quoting with code formatting breaks lines badly and is unreadable on mobile2018-10-07
- Quoted text in code blocks forces horizontal scrolling back and forth2018-07-20
- Indented code blocks force sideways scrolling, hard to read on desktop and mobile2017-10-07
- Fixed-width code blocks scroll sideways and are hard to read on mobile2016-12-07
- Code samples sit in small boxes that force awkward horizontal and vertical scrolling2015-04-28
- Breaking and re-indenting long lines manually every time code moves is tedious2013-03-26
- Site feels very slow to interact with2009-09-14
- Tiny code windows with scrollbars make browsing code hard, forcing copy-paste2008-08-30