Products · Product
Phoenix
Raised as a usability problem by 44 people on Hacker News over 13 years (2014–2026), in 42 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
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
- Scattered JS snippets in files that are hard to find, making debugging difficult2026-06-14
- Must read framework source to understand how compile-time macros are wired2026-06-03
- Users must wait about a second and see an error while the socket reconnects2025-10-16
- Phoenix feels clunky and unintuitive to work with for server-rendered views2025-09-23
- Every feature needs two near-identical variants, making code confusing and hard to trace2025-06-21
- Hard to wrap head around abstractions; learning takes longer than expected2025-06-15
- LiveView apps become unusable or stop working on spotty connections, like in elevators2025-05-04
- Too hard to implement inline editing with multiple features like one-item-at-a-time editing2025-04-13
- Hard to test and feels complicated, with a steep learning curve2025-01-23
- Todo app must wait for socket to reconnect each time phone unlocks2024-12-04
- LiveView apps become unusable when the network connection is flaky, as in elevators2024-12-04
- Install from official docs failed; hour spent uninstalling and reinstalling, unsure what went wrong2024-11-09
- Hard to know how to set up contexts before the app's shape is clear2024-10-10
- Content changes and navigation feel very laggy when the user is far from the server2024-04-03
- Tutorials found were for older versions with different file names and locations2023-09-29
- Clicking outside the modal or pressing back destroys the form and unsaved content2023-09-13
- Overused for static pages, causing silent broken pages and cognitive overhead for developers2023-09-12
- Hard to configure and deploy, with murky docs for newcomers2023-03-06
- Barrier to entry is huge; hard to build without expert knowledge2023-03-06
- Clicking a button shows no feedback while data loads, so it looks unresponsive2023-03-04
- Non-trivial UX such as arrow-key autosuggest selection needs lots of extra JS fighting the framework2023-02-25
- On flaky mobile connections the page freezes with no feedback, so users think the site is broken2022-12-31
- Docs don't explain what changed between versions or how to fix the breakage2022-11-09
- Upgrading LiveView versions is a long, painful slog with many breaking issues2022-11-09
- Must guess which module a function is in to find its docs2022-11-09
- Syntax is non-intuitive and was hard to find in the docs2022-08-20
- Setting a cookie requires a hacky redirect through a controller, which is more work than wanted2022-08-19
- Users must wait a moment before a loading spinner appears after clicking a button2022-07-07
- Plugs defined far from handlers make request flow confusing and hard to trace2022-05-03
- Macro-generated functions have no traceable definition to click through to in the repo2021-10-05
- Macro magic becomes confusing and hard to follow when many macros run2021-10-05
- Docs on integrating JavaScript aren't helpful; can't figure out triggering phx-submit from a keydown handler2021-09-22
- Navigating to a new page waits for full server render, so nothing shows and it feels laggy2021-06-28
- Interactions feel laggy for many users regardless of location or connection2021-06-25
- Docs assume elixir ecosystem knowledge, hard for beginners to learn from2021-06-22
- Docs assume prior Elixir ecosystem knowledge, hard for beginners to follow2021-06-22
- Docs assume Rails knowledge and are confusing for newcomers2021-06-22
- Can't find out what features exist or which files to create2021-05-22
- Clicking links feels laggy, with a noticeable wait before content appears2021-05-18
- Interactive UI feels laggy over the internet and countdowns stall then speed up2021-04-30
- After clicking delete, user must wait for server round trip before the list updates2021-04-30
- Users see disconnect warnings when the server briefly goes down, even while just reading2021-02-25
- Countdown updates queue up and arrive unreliably, so the author had to fake them in JavaScript2020-04-17
- Having to create plug pipelines just to set layouts feels non-optimal for two layouts2020-04-02
- Tiled Spotify window becomes unusable because half of it is hidden below its minimum size2020-01-25
- Generated database bindings are unusable without heavy customization like custom authentication2019-11-16
- Error messages make it hard to find where a typo is2017-03-04
- Pages are blank or non-linking, so visitors can't tell what the company does2016-03-12
- Ran into dependency issues straight out of the box2016-03-11
- Tutorial's Phoenix version fails out of the box; hunting for a working version and fixing setup errors takes forever2016-03-11