Products · Product
Mathematica
Raised as a usability problem by 64 people on Hacker News over 17 years (2009–2025), in 47 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
Too many functions and quirks make simple tasks painful to writeUnreviewed
20092026- Language is so hard to read it's called write-only2022-02-06
- Too many functions and language quirks make simple tasks painful to write2019-02-11
- Simple tasks like writing functions or if statements are painful, and error messages are useless2015-04-29
Too slow on Raspberry Pi to be usableUnreviewed
20092026- Runs so slowly on Raspberry Pi that it is effectively unusable2024-01-13
- Slow to run and huge to download on a Raspberry Pi 32023-02-26
- Runs so slowly on earlier Raspberry Pi models it is almost unusable2023-02-26
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
- Programming language is badly designed and hard to use sanely2025-12-06
- Errors print a red message and continue, filling output with gibberish and making mistakes hard to find2025-12-06
- Old Mathematica app still launches version 14.0 after upgrading, so the upgrade looks failed2024-08-03
- Runs so slowly on Raspberry Pi that it is effectively unusable2024-01-13
- No undo for a long time; syntax highlighting tied to kernel state2024-01-12
- Hard to use as a full programming language; messy for general programming2024-01-12
- Steep learning curve takes years before users feel proficient2024-01-12
- Hard to manage or reset program state; code cannot be commented; idiosyncratic language2024-01-12
- Basic functions get stuck running forever with no way to see why2024-01-12
- Slow to run and huge to download on a Raspberry Pi 32023-02-26
- Hard to use, as the commenter claims it is deliberately designed to be learned only with sunk cost2023-02-26
- Runs so slowly on earlier Raspberry Pi models it is almost unusable2023-02-26
- Notebook interface feels dated and slow; kernel startup and evaluations lag badly2022-11-05
- Basic core functions buggy and poorly implemented, costing users thousands of hours2022-11-05
- Notebooks lock up and the UI freezes while video processing runs2022-05-03
- Software runs slower each release and struggles with large files and graphics2022-04-08
- Language is so hard to read it's called write-only2022-02-06
- Clunky interface on Linux; most tasks require the Notebook interface2022-02-05
- Variables leak into global scope as renamed symbols, making them hard to use2021-12-17
- Global scope is default and encapsulation tools are hard to use, causing messy code2021-12-16
- Typos in names silently create symbolic expressions instead of showing errors, masking bugs2021-12-16
- Scoping and evaluation rules are error-prone and easy to get wrong2021-12-16
- Slow startup and multi-second waits for computing expressions2021-12-16
- Even a tiny classifier takes over six minutes from prompt to execution2021-12-16
- No up-arrow recall of previous commands; must edit old ones with awkward cursor placement and mouse use2020-03-19
- No up-arrow to repeat previous command; must edit awkwardly with mouse and cursor2020-03-19
- Awful control flow syntax makes longer scripts pretty much impossible to read2020-01-28
- Syntax feels unintuitive to people coming from conventional programming languages2019-08-27
- Standard library is so enormous that users can't keep track of what exists2019-05-10
- Spent hours failing to figure out how to use simple DFS functionality2019-05-09
- Maps are half-baked, and With/Module can't reference earlier bindings, forcing nested statements2019-05-03
- Notebook interface is horrible to use with more complex expressions2019-04-16
- Debugger is hard to figure out; too complex to single-step and inspect values2019-04-16
- No paren matching or structural editing, so balancing parentheses is manual and error-prone2019-04-16
- Default stylesheets don't visibly separate input from output, making notebooks hard to read2019-04-16
- Introduction hides how Table's iterator syntax works, leaving syntax opaque to newcomers2019-02-12
- Too many functions and language quirks make simple tasks painful to write2019-02-11
- Kernel often crashes, syntax is weird to enter, and dynamic graphics stop working2019-02-11
- Loading external libraries is non-intuitive and splitting a program across files is hard2018-09-15
- Text editor can't undo more than once and has no redo2018-08-30
- Hard to make it run things in the order wanted; scoping behaves oddly2018-08-05
- Can't see where line breaks are because wrapped-line indentation is too subtle2018-04-15
- The graphical interface feels slow on any computer2018-02-20
- No clear visual distinction between input and output cells2018-02-20
- Nearly impossible to use; notebooks silently corrupt with no warning2017-07-25
- Windows end up misplaced and mouse clicks miss their intended targets on Linux2017-01-06
- Built-in entity data queries are so slow they are impractical to use in demos2016-09-11
- Building new things that interface with anything outside it is painful2016-06-09
- Black-box system makes it hard to understand what is computed and check mistakes2016-02-23
- Opening a documentation page can make users wait a minute for evaluation2016-01-21