Products · Product
Racket
Raised as a usability problem by 42 people on Hacker News over 15 years (2010–2024), in 40 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
Racket IDE is confusing for newcomersUnreviewed
20102026- Racket is slow, which slows down the entire development cycle2022-05-02
- The Racket IDE is painful to use, especially compared to native Mac editors2019-02-23
- Racket IDE is sometimes confusing for newbies2010-10-20
Hard to tell implemented language apart from Racket when code looks identicalUnreviewed
20102026- Hard to separate the implemented language from Racket when code looks identical2022-12-10
- Typed Racket makes attaching non-type contracts to code significantly more difficult2022-07-14
- Mental model for Racket macros is harder to understand than alternatives like $lambda2013-08-08
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 45 complaints
- Infinity-aware number sublanguage is nearly unusable for common numeric tasks2024-12-02
- Kernel language is very difficult to use because it has only minimal features2024-11-24
- Manipulating code with parentheses is clunky; IDE doesn't rebalance them when moving code2024-06-16
- Building complex GUIs is hard; docs are terse and concepts difficult to grasp2024-04-22
- Default REPL feels underpowered and has sharp edges in practice2024-04-21
- Racket's student dialect rejects (cons 'foo 'bar) with an error, which the commenter found hostile to beginners2024-01-29
- Hard for a blind programmer to read nested code with screen readers and parentheses2023-01-03
- Hard to separate the implemented language from Racket when code looks identical2022-12-10
- Typed Racket makes attaching non-type contracts to code significantly more difficult2022-07-14
- Racket is slow, which slows down the entire development cycle2022-05-02
- Cursor jumps around when closing parentheses in the coloured REPL2022-02-10
- Spends a lot of time working out value types in the REPL, which is slow2021-11-12
- Documentation and example code are hard for readers to understand2021-01-25
- Landing page cluttered with too much information, hard to find basics2020-08-26
- Current paragraph title takes up half the mobile screen2019-08-08
- Drag and drop only supports file drops, hitting a wall when extending it2019-07-11
- The Racket IDE is painful to use, especially compared to native Mac editors2019-02-23
- Functions are named per type (string-length, vector-length), unlike the single length call people expect2019-01-31
- Precompiling code is complex and error-prone, and hard to deploy across a team2018-11-04
- IDE is slow and buggy, barely usable on Mac, poor interactive response2018-10-22
- Parallelism abstractions are almost unusable in the author's experience2018-06-15
- Lots of parentheses are annoying and make learners feel stupid2017-10-16
- Text components are sluggish and GUI library parts are overly complicated2017-08-01
- Vector operations return mutable vectors, forcing repeated manual conversion to immutable2017-01-26
- Hard to figure out how to use a simple HTTP module; docs pitched too academically2017-01-25
- Runtime errors give only the function name, no line number, making debugging slow2017-01-25
- Author could never figure out how to use Racket's lazy mode2017-01-09
- Code samples are low-contrast and hard to read until clicked2016-12-23
- Links are hidden until hovered, so users can't tell what the page contains2016-12-23
- Site is too busy, hard to know where to look, GitHub link hard to find2016-12-23
- Docs are dense with jargon and many special-purpose functions are hard to compose2016-10-27
- Too many paradigms in core make it hard to wrap your head around2016-09-26
- Hygienic macros hide state, making macro learning hard and fighting the language constant2016-09-10
- Finding basic semantics means wading through unrelated contracts documentation2016-07-20
- Macro system implementation code is so hard to read it looks like assembly2015-07-01
- Page appears blank because CSS hides the text in Chrome2014-08-22
- Docs main page is cluttered with too many fonts and colors, plus redundant navigation links2014-02-27
- Expressions take several seconds to reach the REPL, and mistyped function names must be retyped with no history2013-08-21
- Mental model for Racket macros is harder to understand than alternatives like $lambda2013-08-08
- Guide and Reference halves of docs have no links between them, so examples are hard to reach2013-05-07
- Forces new users to pick a language when first installed, a barrier to starting2011-08-04
- Couldn't figure out how to get a REPL in the context of a module2011-05-02
- Racket IDE is sometimes confusing for newbies2010-10-20
- Couldn't get files to share the same namespace despite hours of trying2010-08-11
- Couldn't share a namespace between files; docs and examples confusing and didn't work2010-08-04