Products · Product
SBCL
Raised as a usability problem by 18 people on Hacker News over 20 years (2007–2026), in 21 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
No readline-style editing in the REPL outside EmacsUnreviewed
20072026- Raw SBCL REPL lacks readline, so multi-line forms are hard to recall and edit2024-02-22
- No readline-style line editing, making the REPL frustrating outside Emacs2017-08-29
- No readline-style editing makes the REPL frustrating to use outside Emacs2017-08-28
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 21 complaints
- Official docs have scant references and no usage instructions for arenas2026-03-15
- Hard to inspect and debug when using the other environment2024-04-22
- Raw SBCL REPL lacks readline, so multi-line forms are hard to recall and edit2024-02-22
- Debugger is confusing and feels janky compared to integrated debuggers2024-01-24
- Too much to learn to get started with SBCL2022-07-11
- Stray loading banner breaks Makefile and is hard to find documentation for2022-02-11
- Manual doesn't explain how to invoke the compiler or build an executable; only covers saving core images2020-12-03
- Can't evaluate functions from the editor or paste multiline functions into the REPL2019-08-28
- Official documentation is poor, making it hard to learn and build SBCL2019-07-15
- Crashes into a Lisp debugger, making it unusable2017-09-13
- No readline-style line editing, making the REPL frustrating outside Emacs2017-08-29
- No readline-style editing makes the REPL frustrating to use outside Emacs2017-08-28
- Couldn't get past the tooling; SLIME+Emacs setup is hard to learn2016-12-30
- Debugger feels painful to use without SLIME2015-12-05
- Raw REPL is painful to use without a wrapper or special mode2015-08-26
- System calls beyond basics are a drag, forcing C wrapper functions2013-09-20
- Command-line REPL lacks readline support, making it harder to use2012-10-17
- Hard to figure out how to combine the FFI with make, far harder than Python2012-04-06
- Stepper is hard to set up and use2010-12-13
- Build fails on Tiger, forcing hours of trial-and-error with older versions2008-05-31
- Must prefix every variable access with SB-DEBUG:VAR, a real pain2007-05-07