Products · Broad category
Visual programming tools
Raised as a usability problem by 17 people on Hacker News over 14 years (2012–2025), in 17 threads.
This is a broad category rather than one product, so its issues aren't ranked on the home page.
People raised many different problems with Visual programming tools, but no single problem has yet been raised by 3 people in 3 different months and threads.
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 17 complaints
- Hard to find boxes, figure out what connects where, and look up docs2025-11-29
- Visual workflow tools get too hard to debug, test, and version once slightly complex2025-08-04
- Drawing boxes and typing text in them is clunky and limited to keyboard and mouse input2025-01-03
- Small field changes require manually dragging most of the form around2024-01-02
- Visual tools are slow and hard to debug compared with writing code2023-10-31
- Can't select files matching a pattern like a date in the name, so it's frustrating2023-09-28
- Branches need duplicated dependency edges drawn throughout, making them tedious to build and read2023-08-17
- Simple visual editors force complex logic into many finicky controls that must work together2023-03-30
- Switching back and forth between visual and manual coding is tedious and breaks2022-05-13
- Visual editors hide CSS positioning, so users must learn it anyway and hunt through bloated option buttons2022-05-09
- Dragging widgets onto a form into layouts is tedious and miserable to do2021-11-11
- Can't find a link to try it; everything is behind sign-ups and accounts2020-03-11
- Crossing wires make simple designs hard to comprehend and detail hard to show2019-05-02
- Page cannot be scrolled on iOS mobile and feels sluggish2018-12-08
- Workflow diagrams span 50 printed pages and are nearly impossible to understand2018-04-24
- Hard to get past basic tutorials; documentation and instructions become a labyrinth for beginners2014-09-20
- Visual tools for non-programmers became painful to work with on complex banking software2012-08-29