Products · Product
Elixir
Raised as a usability problem by 64 people on Hacker News over 15 years (2012–2026), in 61 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
Verbose syntax is hard to read and understandUnreviewed
20122026- Programming syntax is verbose and hard to read and understand2024-06-28
- Mixed block and keyword do-syntax forms make code inconsistent and hard to read2021-04-06
- Syntax is confusing and inconsistent, leaving code only half-understood2020-10-06
No IDEs and weak debugging support for ElixirUnreviewed
20122026- Elixir plugin made the IDE unusable at times2020-12-30
- Developer tooling for Elixir is poor, with no IDEs and weak debugging support2020-07-20
- Elixir deployments have many moving parts and feel brittle and hard to manage2019-04-03
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 50 complaints
- New default page is horrible to use2026-09-02
- Hard to learn correctly handling hundreds of thousands of processes2026-06-03
- Developer experience was bad and the commenter could not find a way to use it with their setup2026-06-03
- Demos look extremely slow when interacting with the product2026-01-26
- Hard for imperative programmers to learn, so hiring a team is difficult2025-11-03
- Unhelpful guides that don't work, and too-steep learning curve for compatibility2025-10-16
- Typos fail silently and mistakes are hard to catch without static typing2025-07-23
- Hard to set up matching environments across machines, so the team needs Docker2025-06-05
- Hidden race conditions in synchronous functions require reading source code or prior experience to discover2025-03-28
- Many small paper cuts and hard-to-follow guidelines interrupt developers' workflow and onboarding2025-03-26
- Warnings cannot be disabled, and docs search returns random versions and misses visible keywords2025-03-26
- Must cobble together disparate tools to get a usable editor experience2025-01-07
- Unclear what error tuples contain; some functions both throw and return success tuples2024-08-28
- Binding variables on both sides of a match makes code confusing to read2024-07-01
- Programming syntax is verbose and hard to read and understand2024-06-28
- No auto-complete, and Mnesia errors give only a vague TypeError with a line number2024-05-09
- The pin operator is confusing for newcomers learning Elixir2024-02-07
- Can't tell parameter types from signatures, so wrong arguments only surface at runtime2023-11-10
- Language server crashes often, lacks code actions, and linter has no auto-fix2023-10-28
- Learning curve is very steep, and keeping work in one process is hard2023-09-29
- Debugger is pretty useless when debugging multiple processes2023-09-29
- Anonymous function calls use an awkward f.() syntax that people complain about2023-08-14
- Missing or sparse docs force reading source code to understand functions2023-08-04
- Clever invented names and DSL macros add mental overhead and make searching and refactoring hard2023-08-03
- Docs are too minimal, leaving developers stuck on basic problems with no help2023-05-01
- Couldn't find needed information; docs for related modules are scattered across different places2022-11-11
- Took hours to discover that mnesia dumps only restore with identical user@node names2022-09-17
- Hard to learn GenServer, Application, and Supervisor from the docs alone2022-05-09
- Elixir docs are sparse, so searches land on Rails docs instead2021-10-26
- Can't figure out how to build and deploy the app; guides bury it in CI complexity2021-09-18
- Command missing from stable release, barely documented, leaves unexplained generated files2021-06-04
- Can't find current documentation for authentication packages; existing docs are outdated2021-06-04
- Plugin hogs CPU unless features are disabled; JetBrains plugin also fails to work2021-05-19
- Mixed block and keyword do-syntax forms make code inconsistent and hard to read2021-04-06
- Can't cancel a multi-line command without losing the whole session context2021-03-19
- Each library has its own syntax rules, making codebases varied and hard to follow2021-01-14
- Editor plugins are slow and consume excessive CPU during indexing2021-01-14
- Elixir plugin made the IDE unusable at times2020-12-30
- Code is hard to read; Ecto has many ways to do the same thing2020-12-21
- Streaming UI changes over unreliable mobile networks makes the interface break or stall2020-11-22
- Syntax is confusing and inconsistent, leaving code only half-understood2020-10-06
- Setting the entrypoint took too long; release output is confusing and daunting for beginners2020-09-17
- Finds the language harder to read, with binary and map syntax called atrocious2020-09-07
- Intuitive string code is orders of magnitude slower; fast version needs expert knowledge2020-08-09
- Developer tooling for Elixir is poor, with no IDEs and weak debugging support2020-07-20
- Developer tooling makes it hard to jump to definitions and navigate code2020-05-23
- Typos and wrong data shapes only surface at runtime, forcing slow start-request-fail cycles2020-05-23
- Docs insufficient, took nearly a day to figure out handling a POST request2020-04-24
- Developer tooling feels like an afterthought, making day-to-day development harder2020-01-10
- Configuration, build and deployment process is not snappy2020-01-07