data.table

Raised as a usability problem by 7 people on Hacker News over 13 years (2014–2026), in 6 threads.

People raised many different problems with data.table, 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

User can never remember the syntax and must relearn it each time2026-06-24
Syntax isn't self-describing, uses abbreviations and hidden R magic that confuses learners2022-01-16
Leading comma, .SD, and mixed quoting are confusing to newcomers learning the syntax2022-01-16
Nested DT[...] syntax with .I and V1 is hard to read and understand2021-12-17
Joins are too clever and hard to understand or express intuitively2021-12-17
Too different from other libraries, disrupting cognitive flow; too many ways to do things2021-03-15
Hard to find the logic in its interface2020-01-06
Rolling joins and other new concepts take time to learn and understand2014-12-31