Products · Product
IBM
Raised as a usability problem by 34 people on Hacker News over 18 years (2009–2026), in 37 threads.
People raised many different problems with IBM, 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 34 complaints
- Terse, unhelpful menus and error messages, plus acronym-heavy jargon2026-06-01
- Two hamburger menus among text headings make it hard to find the right one2025-06-17
- Confusing incompatible toolchains and cluttered GUI tools made it hard to get started2025-04-11
- Function keys are hard to keep track of, risking pressing the wrong one2025-04-02
- Editor's limited view window shows only a small part of the code2025-01-06
- Enterprise software docs are wrong in places and the software is slow and cumbersome2024-05-15
- REST calls mix JavaScript strings, embedded HTML in JSON, and tables identified only by undocumented GUIDs2023-11-15
- Terminal UI conventions are alien and unified in unintuitive ways, hard for newcomers to use2023-10-24
- Overengineered site that is hard to use on desktop, user gave up2023-05-13
- Cisco's intranet built on IBM software was impossible to navigate2022-10-19
- Website is so slow the user could no longer use it2022-01-23
- Users don't understand that Field Exit and Enter behave differently, so Enter doesn't work as they expect2021-11-28
- Hard to find pricing and correct version; setup and documentation confusing, broken links2021-05-17
- Compile errors open source in a separate editor that can't recompile, forcing save, close, and window switching2020-04-20
- Using the compiler was an unpleasant experience every time2019-08-20
- Must click over 20 times to read FAQ answers, since others collapse2019-03-13
- Website is slow to load and respond, with too many hero videos2019-01-08
- Slow, terrible web interface, and requirements cannot be diffed properly2018-08-17
- Pages stop loading when cookie grows too big, forcing users to delete cookies manually2018-06-25
- Environment took ages to load and do anything on an old machine2018-01-18
- IBM's software is very difficult to use2017-09-29
- Float coordinates round map positions, causing data mismatches with clients2017-07-14
- Double-clicking an error opens a separate editor where you cannot recompile, forcing save, close, and return2017-06-24
- Can't read back the current video mode because EGA registers are write-only2017-04-14
- Payment form requires enabling third-party cookies, which is hard to find and enable in Chrome2017-03-21
- Hard to navigate the IBM site to find the DB2 driver2016-11-18
- Test language is awkward, inconsistent, and poorly documented; can't directly express NULL-return checks2016-02-01
- Building open source packages on AIX is painful; xlc and dbx make debugging and compiling hard2015-04-04
- Programs had to be split into overlays reusing limited memory, a painful process2015-03-21
- Trackpoint sensitivity too low for a hi-res display; speeding OS mouse up makes the other mouse too fast2015-02-13
- Navbar is oversized for its six words, distracting like a modal2014-12-15
- Chatty synchronous software grinds to a halt over intercontinental links, unusable by default2014-05-31
- Forced internal software changes are inferior and hurt productivity; workers' feedback is ignored2012-04-23
- Package categories missing and package system half-broken, making installing software confusing and hard2009-03-13