Products · Product
WolframAlpha
Raised as a usability problem by 28 people on Hacker News over 18 years (2009–2026), in 23 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
Users can't discover what can be queried or which phrasing worksUnreviewed
20092026- Hard to phrase queries so the system understands them, and hard to verify results2021-11-07
- Users can't discover what can be queried or which phrasing works2015-10-11
- Dead-end queries give no hint of what to try, so users can't refine searches2009-07-09
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 28 complaints
- Clicking an ingredient option silently drops the entered amount and shows a different result2026-06-19
- Superscript exponent input is misinterpreted, so e^2n is read as e^2 times n2024-08-20
- Simple queries take about 30 seconds, so the website feels slow2024-03-05
- Fails on the commander's query, so user must guess what it can handle2023-12-06
- Inputs that used to work now fail to parse after the Math Input change2021-12-14
- Syntax is loose and hard to explain; users must learn a feel for it2021-11-07
- Hard to phrase queries so the system understands them, and hard to verify results2021-11-07
- Simple queries take about six seconds to load, which is frustrating2021-11-06
- Hard to use for checking Classical Physics homework work2021-11-06
- Complex queries need trial and error to get the right syntax and results2021-11-06
- Often needs several rephrased queries to get the desired result2021-11-06
- Pages take 5-20 seconds to load for simple calculations2021-11-06
- Results take 15 to 60 seconds to load, and copying them is painful2021-01-06
- Simple unit math takes about 4 seconds, too slow to play with numbers2020-05-28
- Commenter could not get the web page to work at all2017-01-11
- Rephrased question gets unrelated answer, so user must guess what phrasing works2016-03-03
- Combined values in one query get confused and only one is evaluated2016-02-29
- Easy to break documents; deleted images need page refresh; can't undo accidental new lines2016-01-19
- Users can't discover what can be queried or which phrasing works2015-10-11
- Spent 15 minutes unable to combine separate query results into one answer2013-11-30
- Signup requires a magic incantation and the sign-up didn't work2012-08-30
- Bails out or misreads long expressions, silently calculating only part of input2012-03-31
- Often doesn't understand the query on the first try, needing rephrasing2012-02-09
- Users must switch apps and retype queries instead of jumping straight to the page2011-02-28
- Hard to browse datasets or create new definitions and search spaces2010-05-19
- Dead-end queries give no hint of what to try, so users can't refine searches2009-07-09
- Hard to browse data; typos cause full re-query instead of letting user fix one term2009-06-03
- Result text is rendered as images, so users must click extra steps to get copyable text2009-05-17