Products · Product
Tcl
Raised as a usability problem by 37 people on Hacker News over 18 years (2009–2026), in 34 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
Braces in comments break the parser with confusing errorsUnreviewed
20092026- Comment syntax has gotchas; mismatched braces inside a proc break it2017-09-19
- Braces in comments or loop spacing break the parser, with a non-intuitive error message2014-11-07
- Curly brackets are syntactically significant even inside strings and comments, causing surprises2012-12-14
Quoting and scoping are easy to get wrong and hard to debugUnreviewed
20092026- Too easy to make errors because everything is treated as a string2023-10-22
- Everything being a string makes quoting hard to get right and causes frequent type errors2023-02-11
- Hard to debug; string-only semantics make quoting error-prone; scoping is easy to get wrong2014-01-16
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 47 complaints
- Nested lindex calls with magic numbers make simple lookups hard to read2026-02-16
- A $ in an SQL string silently resolves as a Tcl variable, making unsafe queries easy to write by mistake2025-09-08
- Non-native controls make the interface look and feel weird to users2025-08-28
- Programmers from C are confused because Tcl's quote characters behave differently than expected2024-10-10
- Found the language very confusing as a novice programmer2024-10-10
- Too easy to make errors because everything is treated as a string2023-10-22
- Syntax is not intuitive, especially for a scripting language2023-05-18
- Many gotchas and confusing behaviour that trip up programmers2023-05-07
- Tcl/Tk UIs look dated and tools are painful to use2023-04-21
- Everything being a string makes quoting hard to get right and causes frequent type errors2023-02-11
- Syntax errors only surface as runtime problems, making them hard to track down2021-11-08
- Error messages lack line numbers, making debugging very slow and frustrating2021-03-11
- Arithmetic via expr is cumbersome and tripped the commenter up2020-10-26
- Powerful features are hard for beginners and easy to misuse2020-08-08
- Installing a Tcl-dependent program gave the user many difficulties2020-01-30
- Errors are hard to debug: variable names silently yield values and line-1 errors point to huge blocks2018-11-09
- Dense syntax makes code hard to pick up again after time away2018-11-09
- Hard to write code accepting either a string or a list, so data must be hand-tagged2018-07-06
- Comment syntax has gotchas; mismatched braces inside a proc break it2017-09-19
- Constantly needs the manual because the command parameter order is inconsistent2017-08-07
- Confusing to tell which Tcl/Tk package to install on macOS2017-08-07
- Debugging is extremely difficult; line numbers unhelpful for large statements2017-08-06
- Mixing Lisp-like semantics with C-style syntax confuses programmers, especially those coming from C2017-08-06
- Error traces dump the whole mess and give only a useless line number2017-08-06
- Full of traps and gotchas, terrible error handling, atrocious data handling2017-08-06
- Square brackets need AltGr combos on German keyboards, harder than parentheses2017-04-30
- Text substitution semantics are bizarre and hugely unintuitive compared to modern languages2017-04-30
- Can't find documentation explaining the layout and how the compiler interprets it2016-07-05
- Inconsistent argument order and naming forces constant lookups and cheat sheets2016-07-03
- Syntax errors surface very late and stack traces are useless for finding them2016-02-29
- Hard to use and slow when writing code in it2016-01-30
- Filehandles leak unless closed manually; cleanup requires tedious bookkeeping2015-08-25
- Scripting newcomers struggle to decipher Tcl docs to do simple things2015-02-24
- Writing #this without a space throws an invalid token error, unlike # this2015-02-24
- Error traceback is awkward and often points to the wrong location2015-02-24
- Tcl's syntax feels awkward to use in practice2014-11-14
- Braces in comments or loop spacing break the parser, with a non-intuitive error message2014-11-07
- Hard to debug; string-only semantics make quoting error-prone; scoping is easy to get wrong2014-01-16
- Everything-is-a-string semantics make code awkward, with quoting problems and hard debugging2014-01-09
- Curly brackets are syntactically significant even inside strings and comments, causing surprises2012-12-14
- Tcl error messages lack prefixes, so they can't be grepped in merged logs2012-12-14
- Functions like lappend silently convert objects to strings, causing problems2012-12-14
- Syntax errors from comments give unhelpful messages without file name or line number2012-12-14
- Syntax errors reported without indicating where in the block the problem is2012-06-17
- Using a command's result requires wrapping it in brackets, forcing jumping around the line2012-02-12
- Must rebuild the interpreter to add extensions, causing conflicting installs2010-03-30
- Easy to accidentally inline a list, causing wrong arguments that are hard to debug2009-09-15