Products · Product
Scala
Raised as a usability problem by 119 people on Hacker News over 19 years (2008–2026), in 116 threads.
No issue was raised by at least 3 people in 3 threads this year.
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Every issue, all time, most people first
IDE tooling is slow, making it cumbersome to useUnreviewed
20082026- Eclipse's Scala plugin was especially awful to work with2025-05-23
- IDE plugin has become unreliable since Scala 32024-10-02
- Scala tooling and IDE support were slow and bad, making it cumbersome to use2024-01-18
Implicits so convoluted IDEs cannot work out what happensUnreviewed
20082026- Easy to write complex implicit code; simple code needs expertise2026-07-28
- Implicit is overloaded in many ways, requiring complex patterns to understand the language2023-03-09
- Implicits resolved incorrectly produce confusing, cryptic behaviour that is hard to diagnose2020-07-10
Every compile takes 5-10 seconds, breaking flowUnreviewed
20082026- Long compile times slow the web dev edit-and-test loop, hurting productivity2019-12-11
- Small changes trigger recompiles taking about three minutes before tests can run2019-04-05
- Slow compile times break the edit-compile-test loop and waste developer time2017-12-04
Many ways to do things and confusing syntax sugarUnreviewed
20082026- New syntax is harder to read and write, adding complexity to basics2021-02-11
- Many ways to do things and confusing syntax sugar, overwhelming until understood2020-11-03
- Inconsistent syntax with many ways to do things, forcing mental juggling2019-04-24
Compiler error messages are poor, hard to diagnose problemsUnreviewed
20082026- Type-related compiler error messages are so confusing that fixing problems takes a long time2022-10-24
- Subtle type errors block the build and are hard for beginners to trace2021-06-30
- Compiler errors are a cryptic stream of sigils that are hard to search for or understand2021-03-22
Type inference fails on trivial code, forcing annotationsUnreviewed
20082026- Weak type inference forces verbose manual type annotations on almost every declaration2019-01-19
- Simple-looking code is confusing because abstraction leaks compiler-generated typeclass internals2017-09-21
- Stepping outside the type system requires awkward, verbose casting code2014-06-30
Stack traces hard to read when runtime crashes happenUnreviewed
20082026- Errors from many Either values lose stack trace and don't say which one failed2021-02-11
- Some stack traces are hard to read and frustrating when runtime crashes happen2016-06-04
- Stack traces are hard to read and IDEs mishandle highlighting and code completion2013-06-19
Type system requires awkward contortions to express intentUnreviewed
20082026- Feels like constantly fighting the type system, making coding annoying and unpleasant2024-08-07
- Type system is incomprehensible, taking a week of hacking to work out what it wants2021-12-11
- Type system requires awkward contortions to express what the programmer wants2014-11-12
Too many little methods with subtle differences to rememberUnreviewed
20082026- Too many little methods with subtle differences to remember, which is exhausting2024-08-13
- Too many overlapping concepts make proficiency slow and implicits hard to reason about2017-10-27
- Multiple non-obvious ways to do the same thing must be memorized2015-03-17
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
- Easy to write complex implicit code; simple code needs expertise2026-07-28
- Docs default to unfamiliar brace-free syntax, making examples hard to read for brace users2025-12-09
- Eclipse's Scala plugin was especially awful to work with2025-05-23
- Simple operations need many convoluted steps compared to Haskell2025-05-02
- Mixing functional and object-oriented styles creates a steep learning curve, hard to understand2025-03-26
- IDE plugin has become unreliable since Scala 32024-10-02
- Navigating to the real implementation of an interface is slow and unreliable, forcing manual full-text searches2024-09-17
- Too many little methods with subtle differences to remember, which is exhausting2024-08-13
- IDEs get confused and show overly generic suggestions when using Scala's implicit magic2024-08-09
- Feels like constantly fighting the type system, making coding annoying and unpleasant2024-08-07
- Scala tooling and IDE support were slow and bad, making it cumbersome to use2024-01-18
- Opening projects in IDEA takes up to 30 minutes, too slow for real projects2024-01-17
- Features feel like a disjointed collage, making the language confusing to use2023-06-12
- Implicit is overloaded in many ways, requiring complex patterns to understand the language2023-03-09
- Can't easily find libraries and definitions by type signature in docs2023-02-12
- Documentation is full of type theory, hard for ordinary developers to follow2022-10-26
- Type-related compiler error messages are so confusing that fixing problems takes a long time2022-10-24
- Renaming a function made the IDE insert broken, non-compiling code everywhere2022-09-13
- IDE support was unstable, Eclipse basically unusable for Scala2022-09-13
- Slow compiler and poor IDE support in Eclipse hindered working with Scala2022-04-30
- Type system is incomprehensible, taking a week of hacking to work out what it wants2021-12-11
- Overloaded symbols like double right arrow are hard to look up and understand2021-09-19
- Subtle type errors block the build and are hard for beginners to trace2021-06-30
- IDE support is slow and lacks refactoring features compared to Java tools2021-03-31
- Too complex for large teams to adopt and get everyone onboard2021-03-24
- Compiler errors are a cryptic stream of sigils that are hard to search for or understand2021-03-22
- Most Scala libraries are hard to use, with unintuitive APIs2021-02-11
- New syntax is harder to read and write, adding complexity to basics2021-02-11
- Errors from many Either values lose stack trace and don't say which one failed2021-02-11
- Scala compiler is very slow, slowing down the developer's work2020-11-05
- Many ways to do things and confusing syntax sugar, overwhelming until understood2020-11-03
- Flexible syntax and multiple styles make code inconsistent and hard to follow2020-09-20
- Implicits resolved incorrectly produce confusing, cryptic behaviour that is hard to diagnose2020-07-10
- Compiler gives less helpful feedback than rustc2020-03-07
- Implicits are so convoluted that even IDEs cannot work out what is happening2019-12-21
- Long compile times slow the web dev edit-and-test loop, hurting productivity2019-12-11
- Inconsistent syntax with many ways to do things, forcing mental juggling2019-04-24
- Small changes trigger recompiles taking about three minutes before tests can run2019-04-05
- Open syntax ranging from imperative to point-free style is hard to grasp2019-03-12
- Weak type inference forces verbose manual type annotations on almost every declaration2019-01-19
- Compiler error messages for implicits are unhelpful, hard to debug2018-07-23
- Struggles to decide which paradigm to use and when to switch2018-07-12
- Author can't work out idiomatic Scala, type model is hard to grasp, docs are inconsistent2018-06-19
- Compiler is very slow and IDE support was poor2018-04-20
- Syntax is messy and operator overloading makes code unreadable to outside programmers2018-02-12
- Complex mix of types, macros and implicits is hard to work with2018-02-11
- Scala operators are confusing, so people can't tell what they do2017-12-25
- Slow compile times break the edit-compile-test loop and waste developer time2017-12-04
- Hard to tell which implicit parameters are needed and how to import them2017-11-11
- Too many overlapping concepts make proficiency slow and implicits hard to reason about2017-10-27