WebAssembly

Raised as a usability problem by 35 people on Hacker News over 10 years (2017–2026), in 29 threads.

People raised many different problems with WebAssembly, 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 33 complaints

WASM applications are practically impossible to debug2026-07-23
Cross-language interoperability and WASI APIs are not ready, so it is rough to use2026-01-09
API reference lists signatures without explaining what parameters mean2025-09-17
Each crossing of the JavaScript barrier causes severe slowdowns in Safari on iOS2025-07-23
Developers find the WebAssembly workflow awful and it must be glued to JavaScript2024-11-19
Mismatched exception settings between modules make the build fail to load2024-10-10
Author had to search every menu to find the hidden map mode option2024-04-02
Page shows only sigil clutter when JavaScript is disabled, not useful fallback2024-02-18
Anchors don't lead to useful places and search fails in MathJax regions2024-02-18
Static documentation takes seconds to load with visible pop-in2024-02-18
Back button does nothing after switching language; no easy way to return to previous example2023-11-16
Back button doesn't work properly when navigating the site2023-11-15
Ctrl/Shift/Alt+click on links opens same tab instead of new tab2023-11-15
Back and next buttons work inconsistently and lose scroll position2023-11-15
Impossible to pass meaningful parameters to Wasm functions from Ruby, forcing filesystem workaround2023-10-04
Choosing a runtime and understanding docs requires digging through code and issues2023-09-24
Spec is hard to grep and lacks code examples to learn from2023-04-22
Text format is more confusing than needed, and docs expect Lisp-style writing2022-06-23
Demos unusable on touch screens; drag and tap gestures not recognised2022-06-20
Can't find the 1.0 spec directly; no direct link, only via W3C links2022-02-12
Must hardcode a JS file that doesn't integrate with npm or build systems2022-02-01
Block and break control flow is non-intuitive for people used to assembly or regular languages2021-07-14
JS interop is a bit annoying depending on what you're doing2021-05-07
Dialog buttons are clickable divs, so screen reader users cannot use them2020-12-31
Buttons built as clickable divs are not accessible, unlike native HTML buttons2020-12-31
Buttons are inaccessible, and the markup has systemic problems that are hard to fix2020-12-31
Clicking a key opens a blank white page with a constant tone, forcing a refresh2020-12-13
Variable panel redraw is very slow, taking 1-2 seconds2020-12-10
Canvas-drawn WebAssembly UIs require reimplementing text selection, right click, focus and accessibility2019-12-06
Rust WebAssembly code must be initialized through JavaScript glue, which is annoying for the developer2018-12-16
Canonical WebAssembly tooling and tests were unusable on Windows for a while2018-01-17
Toolchain generates unwanted stdio emulation code, can't build a standalone wasm library2017-12-19
Font and background colour combination is very hard to read2017-05-24