Products · Broad category
Structural editors
Raised as a usability problem by 10 people on Hacker News over 18 years (2009–2026), in 8 threads.
This is a broad category rather than one product, so its issues aren't ranked on the home page.
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
Editors block edits that temporarily break the text structureUnreviewed
20092026- Structural editors block edits that temporarily break the text structure, frustrating to use2026-02-15
- Every edit must pass through valid structural states, making simple changes awkward and excruciating2025-01-06
- Structure editing feels counterintuitive to the commenter2017-01-18
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 10 complaints
- Structural editors block edits that temporarily break the text structure, frustrating to use2026-02-15
- Cannot copy and paste chunks of code in structural editor2025-01-06
- Editor blocks typing a word until it is already defined2025-01-06
- Every edit must pass through valid structural states, making simple changes awkward and excruciating2025-01-06
- Naive structure editors are a pain to use and slow for entering information2024-02-05
- Requires passing through invalid representations, making incremental editing unintuitive2022-08-11
- Structure editing feels counterintuitive to the commenter2017-01-18
- Unclear how to call the Δ function, must consult manual or copy character2015-05-06
- Forces hand to leave keyboard to edit code, which is clumsy and infuriating2014-10-15
- Simple edits like reordering lines are hard when the editor blocks invalid states2009-01-18