Nushell

Raised as a usability problem by 15 people on Hacker News over 7 years (2019–2025), in 11 threads.

People raised many different problems with Nushell, 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 15 complaints

Cannot edit the current command line in reedline, making it less ergonomic2025-09-01
Backgrounding and foregrounding jobs freezes or crashes the shell, breaking the user's habitual workflow2025-05-06
Error handling is unreliable and buggy, with confusing or wrong error messages2024-10-22
Steep learning curve; struggles to compose complex commands after a year, docs huge but unhelpful2024-03-22
Setting up PATH and env variables is obtuse and hard to port from .profile2023-10-18
Breaking config format changes between versions without warning frustrate daily use2023-09-20
Buggy mv loses data, && and || don't work, updates break scripts2023-09-01
Cannot configure ls output like ls -C, turn off colors, or add indicators2023-08-31
Cookbook isn't searchable, so users can't easily find how-to answers2023-08-31
Pasting passwords inserts unwanted control characters2023-08-31
Semicolon behaves inconsistently, no direct equivalent of bash && or ||, hard to chain commands2023-08-31
Pipeline commands are opaque and hard to understand for users2023-03-12
Must browse docs for everything; commands renamed, behave inconsistently, and key commands are hard to find2023-03-12
Object-based shell implementations feel clumsy and get in the way2023-02-09
Reusing familiar command names like ls is confusing next to the real ls2019-08-24