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Raised as a usability problem by 10 people on Hacker News over 14 years (2013–2026), in 11 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
Stack operations are unintuitive and hard to use in real codeUnreviewed
20132026- Stack operations are unintuitive and far from optimally encoded in real code2021-05-05
- Code becomes opaque because parameters and variables lack meaningful names and rely on stack manipulation2019-05-24
- Forced to pass intermediate results via the stack, which is highly non-intuitive2013-06-20
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 11 complaints
- Polish notation syntax is unintuitive and confusing for beginners2026-07-27
- Couldn't find an easy way to read a line from a file and handle strings2025-09-22
- Complex expression rules are hard to guess without full user guides2024-07-12
- Entering everything in RPN postfix notation is unintuitive for users2023-12-27
- Stack operations are unintuitive and far from optimally encoded in real code2021-05-05
- Complex programs make it hard to keep a mental picture of stack state2020-05-02
- Reading requires tracking the stack; one small slip changes the meaning entirely2019-12-18
- Code becomes opaque because parameters and variables lack meaningful names and rely on stack manipulation2019-05-24
- Forth code is convoluted and hard to understand, with poorly documented words2017-01-28
- Simple tasks are hard to organize; feels like a puzzle to program2016-12-07
- Forced to pass intermediate results via the stack, which is highly non-intuitive2013-06-20