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GDB
Raised as a usability problem by 103 people on Hacker News over 18 years (2009–2026), in 78 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
- 1Debugging is so slow it becomes unusableUnreviewed
- 1Debugging is so slow it becomes unusableUnreviewed
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
Every issue, all time, most people first
Debugging is so slow it becomes unusableUnreviewed
20092026- Debugging setup requires manual configuration and feels worse than IDE debugging2026-05-19
- Debugger is still painful to use compared to older IDE debuggers2025-07-11
- Takes minutes to start debugging and often fails to resolve symbols2025-01-31
Must read a long manual and learn outdated command syntaxUnreviewed
20092026- Commands are esoteric, hard to remember, and syntax is arcane2021-05-20
- Requires reading a long manual and learning outdated command syntax before use2018-07-11
- Typed command syntax is disorienting and hard to follow2015-04-30
Cannot find documentation for gdb's pretty-printer Python APIUnreviewed
20092026- Had to write pretty printers in arcane GDB command syntax for freestanding projects2023-11-06
- Sharing and installing GDB Python printer scripts requires manual copy-paste into .gdbinit2019-05-22
- Can't find documentation for gdb's pretty-printer Python API2017-01-10
TUI mode steals arrow keys from command history and garbles displayUnreviewed
20092026- Command history does not work by default in TUI mode2024-11-23
- TUI mode steals arrow keys from command history and display gets messed up2023-03-10
- After a crash, switching to TUI hides typing and garbles output, requiring exiting and running reset2020-12-13
GUIs assume source code or fail with binary blobsUnreviewed
20092026- GDB GUIs assume source code or simply fail to work with binary blobs2022-03-01
- Installing gdb on macOS requires many obscure steps and no clear official instructions2022-01-09
- Using the 32-bit gdb with 64-bit Go gives a confusing invalid format error2012-07-05
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
- Debugging setup requires manual configuration and feels worse than IDE debugging2026-05-19
- Prints dark blue text on black background, making it unreadable2026-02-18
- Gdb is much less ergonomic to use than Visual Studio's debugger2025-08-23
- Debugger is still painful to use compared to older IDE debuggers2025-07-11
- Bespoke format with inconsistent quoting, incomplete and nearly unusable for many commands2025-02-01
- GDB is awful out of the box, especially for C++, and the commands are hard to use2025-01-31
- GDB/MI API is so poor that every GDB frontend ends up bad2025-01-31
- Takes minutes to start debugging and often fails to resolve symbols2025-01-31
- Debugger TUI gets smashed with app output and tab completion is very slow2025-01-31
- Debugger user experience is atrocious and crashes a lot2025-01-31
- Terrible UI and slow, buggy behavior make debugging frustrating2025-01-31
- GDB is hard to use and is considered a poor debugger2025-01-06
- Command history does not work by default in TUI mode2024-11-23
- Debugger takes up to 5 minutes to start, blocking edit-run cycles2024-11-15
- Step-by-step debugging is terrible on Linux, so people rely on printf instead2024-11-15
- Debugger takes about 10 seconds to launch and half a second per step, feeling sluggish2024-11-15
- Disassemble command fails with missing-function errors instead of disassembling at an address2024-09-09
- Needs a superfluous asterisk to breakpoint an address; disassemble complains about missing functions2024-09-08
- Built-in reverse debugging has overhead so high it is basically unusable2024-07-21
- Had to write pretty printers in arcane GDB command syntax for freestanding projects2023-11-06
- Gdb's display constantly breaks and lacks quick code-walking visualization2023-09-02
- Gdb display constantly breaks and it's hard to quickly step through code2023-09-02
- Setting a pending breakpoint makes the user wait ten minutes for plugins to load2023-06-15
- Needs many setup steps and hidden knowledge before it becomes usable2023-03-10
- Debugger frequently crashes or gets into a confused state requiring restart2023-03-10
- TUI mode steals arrow keys from command history and display gets messed up2023-03-10
- Single-stepping lags badly; pressing step repeatedly shows each line slowly instead of responding instantly2023-03-10
- Can't explore variables or memory by point and click, must use keyboard commands2022-10-01
- Long templated function names and types are hard to read in output2022-10-01
- Used so rarely that its commands must be relearned each time, so developers print statements instead2022-08-13
- GDB is so hard to use that programmers avoid using it2022-08-13
- Its interface is so poor that developers avoid using the debugger2022-08-06
- Inline functions make the debugger's behaviour confusing and quirky for users2022-06-29
- Debugger only shows active user thread stacks, so inspecting other threads requires tedious manual digging through scheduler data2022-06-08
- Common operations like printing arrays or memory are hard and obscure to perform2022-06-04
- Hard to get working, extremely slow to the point of hanging, poor GUI frontends2022-03-02
- GDB GUIs assume source code or simply fail to work with binary blobs2022-03-01
- Dozens of annoying quality-of-life issues; needs a custom .gdbinit before it's comfortable2022-03-01
- Terminal GDB feels dated and hard to use, like 19872022-02-12
- Installing gdb on macOS requires many obscure steps and no clear official instructions2022-01-09
- Debugging C/C++ with GDB/LLDB and their frontends is so poor it's avoided2021-12-31
- Gdb's interface is abysmal and not intuitive to use2021-08-21
- Must manually copy file names, function names and values between debugger and editor2021-06-02
- Commands are esoteric, hard to remember, and syntax is arcane2021-05-20
- Hard to get debug symbols into gdb correctly without expert incantations2021-04-27
- Debugger breakpoints fail unreliably on embedded targets, so tracing code is hard2021-04-27
- Default interface hides program state, making inspection hard to do2021-04-27
- Setting breakpoints by hand and remembering names is too tedious2021-04-24
- GDB and most other language debuggers are painful to use2021-04-24
- Debuggers crash with segfault seconds after reaching a breakpoint2021-01-29