Dart

Raised as a usability problem by 23 people on Hacker News over 16 years (2011–2026), in 23 threads.

People raised many different problems with Dart, 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

Noisy syntax with many keywords and parameter forms makes code hard to read2026-08-13
Saving a file makes code jump around, even after tiny edits, so the user saves less often2025-11-02
Two-space indentation is forced and hard to read, with no way to disable it2025-05-02
Same-named types from different package versions cause confusing 'Expected Foo but got Foo' errors2024-02-28
Multiple overlapping ways to initialize fields make refactoring and understanding code time-consuming2024-02-07
Sealed class declarations are so verbose that the types are hard to get an overview of2023-08-17
Finding where errors are handled means opening 10-15 files2023-05-04
Formatter gives no configuration options, forcing one fixed style on the author2023-02-04
Too much boilerplate code for building UIs, such as wrapping widgets in Center and Container2023-02-03
Can't use constructor parameters as defaults, forcing awkward workarounds like late; state management feels overly complicated2023-02-03
Weak type checking lets mismatches become runtime exceptions, and immutable state needs heavy boilerplate2022-12-02
Can't search for the bang operator because Google doesn't index its symbol usefully2019-08-27
Deep-copying a map requires a JSON serialise and deserialise workaround2019-04-25
Constructor definitions need confusing combinations of factory, static and const keywords2019-01-22
Dart feels like a step back; lacks non-nullable types and feels Java-like2018-06-20
Confusing 'Expected a Foo but got a Foo' errors when two package versions coexist2018-02-20
JS interop with React is painful to use in Dart2017-06-28
Dart React lacks JSX processing, so components can't be defined and reused the way the commenter expected2017-01-11
Accessing window.open content needs buggy JS interop that works on only one compiler and is hard to debug2017-01-11
IDE sometimes shows wrong or dynamic types and autocomplete only works after typing this.2014-06-27
Dart-to-JavaScript interop is clunky and gets complex for non-trivial uses2014-02-26
Can't find the toJson feature in the Dart Editor2014-02-01
Critic says finding references requires using the Dart editor, a tooling limitation2013-03-24
Behaviour differs between dev and production modes, so it is confusing and asserts vanish2013-01-18
Shorthand reuses "this.", so readers can't tell the sugar apart and code is harder to scan2011-10-10