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Julia
Raised as a usability problem by 143 people on Hacker News over 15 years (2012–2026), in 124 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
- 1
- 2Plotting is too slow to respond to useUnreviewed
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8Can't find how to start the Julia REPLUnreviewed
Every issue, all time, most people first
Slow startup and first-run delays make it feel sluggishUnreviewed
20122026- Multi-second compile times make short scripts that run in under 100ms painfully slow2026-09-04
- Precompiles again on every run with no explanation of why2026-02-23
- Startup takes tens of seconds; accidental patterns cause compiler slowdowns2025-10-09
Plotting is too slow to respond to useUnreviewed
20122026- Hard to reach first useful results; plotting needs choosing among many libraries2023-05-10
- Plotting takes seconds to minutes, so users lose focus waiting2022-01-12
- Waiting non-trivial time for the first plot, so iteration is slow2022-01-12
Error messages don't show what went wrongUnreviewed
20122026- Error messages are multiple screens long and hard to read, and getting types right is a pain2023-01-21
- Incomprehensible, unfixable error messages and debugging requires installing packages2021-10-05
- Error messages are unhelpful and scattered, making failures hard to diagnose2020-08-03
Module file structure and imports are confusing to set upUnreviewed
20122026- Confusing distinction between using and include for importing code2026-05-09
- Confusing distinction between using and include syntax for imports2026-05-09
- Community conventions for structuring files and modules are confusing and frequently cause confusion2023-12-04
Hard to tell which method runs due to multiple dispatchUnreviewed
20122026- Hard to tell which method actually gets executed due to multiple dispatch2022-06-07
- Multiple dispatch is confusing and hard to reason about, since same-named functions can behave differently2021-06-21
- Multiple dispatch methods are harder to locate than regular OO methods, even with IDEs or grep2019-02-23
Docs are huge function lists with little prose or examplesUnreviewed
20122026- Documentation website is slow, and libraries are underdocumented, forcing reverse engineering2021-10-05
- Documentation website is painfully slow to use2021-07-26
- Basic function documentation is nearly inaccessible to beginners2021-03-26
Simple REPL input takes tens of seconds to respondUnreviewed
20122026- Long delay on first call to functions in the REPL2020-03-22
- Simple REPL input takes tens of seconds to respond, making it frustrating2019-08-18
- REPL on Windows is so slow that it is effectively unusable2019-06-05
Can't find how to start the Julia REPLUnreviewed
20122026- Hard to find how to get the juliac binary2025-10-09
- Couldn't figure out how to get into the Julia REPL2022-09-13
- Hard to find JuliaCon info; only a small easily missed nav link2014-07-01
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
- VSCode extension is slow, and debugging needs extra packages and a separate interpreter2026-09-14
- Multi-second compile times make short scripts that run in under 100ms painfully slow2026-09-04
- Very slow first execution, forcing users to keep the interpreter open2026-09-04
- Confusing distinction between using and include syntax for imports2026-05-09
- Confusing distinction between using and include for importing code2026-05-09
- Precompiles again on every run with no explanation of why2026-02-23
- Debugger is a separate package and cannot debug compiled code2026-02-20
- Implicit variable declarations make basic language mistakes easy to make2026-02-19
- Built-in debugging experience is poor, requiring a third-party package to be usable2025-10-31
- Startup takes tens of seconds; accidental patterns cause compiler slowdowns2025-10-09
- Language server crashes often and completion is slow on large projects2025-10-09
- Hard to find how to get the juliac binary2025-10-09
- Docs don't say what seek position is, valid types, out-of-bounds behaviour, or errors2025-10-01
- Whole-program type inference makes code slow and hard to test generically2025-09-28
- Long precompile delays every run, forcing workarounds like building custom sysimages2025-08-05
- Mutable Expr type makes metaprogramming substantially harder2025-02-20
- Scripts take around 40 seconds to start because everything recompiles each run2025-02-06
- Julia is too slow to start up, making it unusable for exploratory work2025-02-06
- Slow compile times and weak IDE and linting support make development painful2025-01-12
- Long time-to-first-run makes non-trivial Julia packages painful to iterate on2024-08-29
- CSS and layout problems are distracting for the first ten minutes2024-05-23
- Hard to tell how to use the website at all2024-05-18
- Community conventions for structuring files and modules are confusing and frequently cause confusion2023-12-04
- Each edit-and-run cycle suffers tens of seconds of latency overhead2023-12-04
- Startup latency from loading packages is too slow for script-style workflows2023-12-04
- Module file structure and imports are confusing and frequently cause confusion2023-12-04
- Development environment is almost unusable outside the REPL or notebooks2023-12-04
- Startup latency (time to first plot/execution) is too high, and the environment is hard to use outside the REPL or notebooks2023-12-04
- Autocompletions take several minutes to appear after opening a file2023-09-09
- Linter gives so many false positives that user ignores all but basic warnings2023-09-08
- Keeps having to use the REPL in non-intuitive ways2023-09-08
- Package management is harder to navigate than Python's2023-07-24
- Opting out of vendored binaries is possible but not user friendly; PATH and version conflicts take hours2023-07-04
- Hard for newer users to use for finding type stability problems2023-06-04
- Syntax is close enough to Python to keep causing confusion2023-05-17
- Parallelism is very confusing, easy to break, and inefficient when it works2023-05-13
- Hard to tell whether 1:0 is an empty range or a reversed inclusive range2023-05-13
- Half-open ranges confuse counting, e.g. blocks 5 to 15 read as ten, not eleven2023-05-13
- Skimming the landing page, readers can't tell 'Plots' is a library name2023-05-10
- Hard to reach first useful results; plotting needs choosing among many libraries2023-05-10
- Can't redefine types without restarting the session, contrary to REPL-driven development2023-03-19
- Hard to tell which method will be called and where it lives2023-03-10
- Hard to copy a working REPL line into a file smoothly2023-03-04
- Functions silently accept wrong-shaped inputs, so bugs surface far from their cause2023-01-29
- Error messages are multiple screens long and hard to read, and getting types right is a pain2023-01-21
- Code completions take many minutes to start working after opening a file2022-12-14
- Debugging is hard, and IDE support is not yet good enough2022-12-08
- Hard to tell where function overloads come from; imports dump all exported symbols2022-12-01
- Error output lists type, candidate hints, then location in backwards, unhelpful order2022-11-24
- Couldn't figure out how to get into the Julia REPL2022-09-13