Products · Product
jq
Raised as a usability problem by 66 people on Hacker News over 13 years (2014–2026), in 44 threads.
Every issue, all time, most people first
Syntax becomes confusing quickly with anything advancedUnreviewed
20142026- Found jq's CLI and syntax too complicated to use2026-06-18
- Jq filter syntax is cryptic and confusing, so LLMs often get it wrong2026-04-11
- Jq's operator syntax is confusing and hard to work with2026-03-27
Syntax is hard to remember, so examples get searched repeatedlyUnreviewed
20142026- Syntax is ad hoc and clunky, so every use requires hunting the docs2024-03-22
- Syntax never makes sense; must copy solutions from Stack Exchange every time2022-04-26
- Syntax is often very clunky to work with2022-04-26
Query language is hard to learn for occasional one-linersUnreviewed
20142026- Query syntax is unintuitive, forcing users to search for every small step2023-09-07
- Query language is hard to learn for occasional quick one-liner use2020-11-06
- Hard to find things in the manual and to write multi-step queries without much effort2019-12-22
Moderately complex tasks are hard, with frustrating documentationUnreviewed
20142026- Hard to work out non-trivial tasks; documentation offers little help2021-08-01
- Hard to use; needs docs constantly and takes ages for complex tasks2020-11-06
- Moderately complex tasks are hard to accomplish, and the documentation is frustrating2020-07-01
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
- Found jq's CLI and syntax too complicated to use2026-06-18
- Jq filter syntax is cryptic and confusing, so LLMs often get it wrong2026-04-11
- Syntax is arcane, so users can never remember how to extract simple values2026-03-27
- Hard to remember jq's syntax despite repeated use2026-03-27
- Infrequent users must look up commands every time and iterate slowly2026-03-27
- Jq's operator syntax is confusing and hard to work with2026-03-27
- Jq's syntax is unintuitive and hard to edit in a plain terminal2026-01-30
- Commenter never learned jq syntax, so harder queries are too complicated to figure out quickly2025-05-02
- Jq's syntax is unintuitive, so users skip learning it and rely on ChatGPT2025-01-12
- Syntax is ad hoc and clunky, so every use requires hunting the docs2024-03-22
- Jq is very unintuitive to the commenter2024-01-12
- Jq's syntax is hard to read and understand2023-11-30
- Hard to use, so the author preferred a JSONPath-based alternative2023-11-08
- Hard to remember jq syntax, so users must keep consulting documentation or ChatGPT2023-11-08
- Jq syntax is non-intuitive and not self-evident, hard to learn2023-11-08
- Can never remember jq syntax when needed, so writes Python instead2023-09-24
- Finds jq unintuitive, so prefers using a Node REPL instead2023-09-22
- Has to keep documentation open every time to use it2023-09-19
- Nothing signals that \() is string templating syntax, so users must dig through docs2023-09-19
- Syntax is confusing; had to constantly look things up and needed parentheses to get expected behavior2023-09-07
- Query syntax is unintuitive, forcing users to search for every small step2023-09-07
- Unintuitive syntax, needs searching for each step, and cryptic answers only experts can decipher2023-09-07
- Streaming features are hard to understand, and jq is slow on large JSON2023-05-26
- Finds jq's syntax and interface bewildering and hard to use2023-03-16
- Hard to learn combining pipes and iterators; relies on trial and error2023-01-17
- The jq language is unintuitive and hard to use2022-11-25
- Hard to figure out how to do conditional editing and can't find documentation2022-11-03
- Jq's syntax is hard to memorize2022-10-17
- Learning a separate tool for each data format is burdensome; jq's syntax is obtuse2022-04-27
- Commenter says jq is hard to use, with no specifics given2022-04-27
- Syntax for printing several object values at once is hard to remember, requiring lookups2022-04-26
- Syntax never makes sense; must copy solutions from Stack Exchange every time2022-04-26
- Syntax is often very clunky to work with2022-04-26
- Jq's query syntax is non-intuitive and hard to learn2021-12-23
- Advanced jq syntax is arcane and hard to remember without consulting the manual2021-12-06
- Syntax is hard to remember, so the user keeps copying examples from Stack Overflow2021-08-25
- Jq's DSL is hard to remember and inscrutable, so users must keep googling it2021-08-25
- Syntax is obtuse and hard to remember, so users must repeatedly search examples2021-08-25
- Commenter finds jq really annoying to use2021-08-02
- Hard to work out non-trivial tasks; documentation offers little help2021-08-01
- Hard to find answers when returning with a specific how-to question2021-08-01
- Syntax is hard to grasp, so every use needs heavy googling2021-08-01
- Constantly trips over quoting and forgets the DSL, so writing queries takes forever2021-02-28
- Verbose commands and odd syntax that must be memorized2020-12-21
- Query language is hard to learn for occasional quick one-liner use2020-11-06
- Hard to use; needs docs constantly and takes ages for complex tasks2020-11-06
- Hard to learn, so unusable for occasional quick one-liners2020-11-06
- Man page is as hard to use as jq itself for lookup2020-11-06
- Commenter finds jq's query language slower to use than combining grep, tr and sed2020-08-07
- Moderately complex tasks are hard to accomplish, and the documentation is frustrating2020-07-01