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Crystal programming language
Raised as a usability problem by 20 people on Hacker News over 11 years (2015–2025), in 20 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
Every issue, all time, most people first
Error messages are obscure, especially with macros and overloadsUnreviewed
20152026- Error messages are unfriendly, so the user must look up what they mean2022-11-20
- Error messages are obscure and hard to read, especially with macros and overloads2022-09-02
- Error messages are obscure, especially when macros are involved2022-09-02
Compilation is slow, forcing long waitsUnreviewed
20152026- Compilation is slow, and the Crystal LSP server is painfully slow to respond2022-11-29
- Compilation is painfully slow, making the language too painful to work with2022-01-26
- Slow compilation and weak IDE support make daily development painful2020-11-06
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
- Hits many issues and slowdowns during use, so the author keeps switching back to Ruby2025-05-09
- Every change triggers full recompilation, and the language server pauses about 30 seconds on each keystroke2024-03-09
- Autocomplete and hover documentation are so slow they are essentially useless2024-03-09
- Hard to grasp type grammar; mixing Ruby looseness with strict typing gives weird ergonomics2023-09-25
- Editor autocomplete barely works, forcing constant switching to browser docs2023-05-05
- Compilation is slow, and the Crystal LSP server is painfully slow to respond2022-11-29
- Error messages are unfriendly, so the user must look up what they mean2022-11-20
- Error messages are obscure and hard to read, especially with macros and overloads2022-09-02
- Can't find how to use arrays after clicking through many pages2022-09-02
- Error messages are obscure, especially when macros are involved2022-09-02
- Compiler error messages are poor and seem to report errors that aren't real2022-04-28
- Gives unhelpful error messages, making problems hard to diagnose2022-04-18
- Compilation is painfully slow, making the language too painful to work with2022-01-26
- Couldn't tell what the language is for from the landing page2021-10-15
- Compiler error messages are hard to understand, making the new language difficult to learn2021-07-21
- Installing and setting up third-party processors is hard for people unfamiliar with Java tools2021-03-24
- Compiler error messages are so unhelpful the commenter found them unusable2021-03-23
- Slow compilation and weak IDE support make daily development painful2020-11-06
- Compile cycle is too slow, slowing down development iteration2020-05-14
- Global inference makes code hard to understand and gives poor type error messages2020-03-30
- Logo doesn't link home; it is a draggable toy instead2019-09-23
- Running a Crystal app on Windows takes seven manual steps, too many for end users2019-04-19
- Spent hours failing to set up a basic OpenGL dev environment2017-12-06
- Searching for Crystal returns SAP Crystal Reports results, forcing manual filtering2015-12-29