IntelliJ (and other IDEs) have a funny workflow for generated code. I want to edit a .proto file and have it handled the same way editing a .java file is, but I have to build it Maven/Gradle.
Ask HN: What are your current programming pet peeves?
11–20 of 110 posts
Re: Ask HN: What are your current programming pet peeves?
#12I can't believe that in 2025 it is still hard to find documentation for basic functionality in languages as ubiquitous as, say, Python. If I google something simple I get 100 junk sites of garbage (GeeksForGeeks, W3Schools, etc), a bunch of AI-generated crap, a bunch of archaic out-of-date stuff, the official documentation which is a wall of dense text, some tutorials that mention the basics, a bunch of shitty bootca…
be the change you wish to see
Re: Ask HN: What are your current programming pet peeves?
#13Drop 32 bit, 16b modes and segments from x64 CPU's. If you must, maintain just one core fully x86.
Re: Ask HN: What are your current programming pet peeves?
#14When someone uses an odd number of indentation! That really grinds my gears for some reason.
This feels like an urban legend designed to scare kids
Re: Ask HN: What are your current programming pet peeves?
#15I can't believe that in 2025 it is still hard to find documentation for basic functionality in languages as ubiquitous as, say, Python. If I google something simple I get 100 junk sites of garbage (GeeksForGeeks, W3Schools, etc), a bunch of AI-generated crap, a bunch of archaic out-of-date stuff, the official documentation which is a wall of dense text, some tutorials that mention the basics, a bunch of shitty bootca…
Python has amazing documentation. Between the built-in help() function and the official documentation (which is hosted on their site) it's hard to find anything better.
Re: Ask HN: What are your current programming pet peeves?
#16When someone uses an odd number of indentation! That really grinds my gears for some reason.
https://github.com/libretro/RetroArch
Nearly a million lines of 3-spaced C89, still in heavy perpetual development.
Re: Ask HN: What are your current programming pet peeves?
#17Packages/frameworks/libraries deprecating features left right and center.
Tech is moving too fast to keep up, a project I worked on and haven't touched in months; NPM would make me feel it's ancient, ofc a lot of the updates are security patches and important, but more often than not it's just libraries trying to race other libraries building different (debatable) features.
Re: Ask HN: What are your current programming pet peeves?
#18monorepos complicate everything. documentation doesn't factor them in, deployment instructions don't factor them in. efficient deployment needs a whole additional framework on top. additionally AI also doesn't understand the combination of things, but when it does, a new major version of a framework has dropped and isn't in the training set.
I'm just venting because that's the prompt and I don't need a solution or rely on AI. but if someone does have solutions I guess I'm interested
Re: Ask HN: What are your current programming pet peeves?
#19It’s frustrating to have to find the right place to report a bug, learn the specific format the project is expecting, then have the bug closed by a “stale bot” after a few weeks. I wish there were an independent, cross-product bug tracker that focused on cataloguing and diagnosing bugs for the benefit of users rather than on tracking work for the benefit of the developer.
Re: Ask HN: What are your current programming pet peeves?
#20I can't believe that in 2025 it is still hard to find documentation for basic functionality in languages as ubiquitous as, say, Python. If I google something simple I get 100 junk sites of garbage (GeeksForGeeks, W3Schools, etc), a bunch of AI-generated crap, a bunch of archaic out-of-date stuff, the official documentation which is a wall of dense text, some tutorials that mention the basics, a bunch of shitty bootca…
What kind of Python information were you having trouble finding?
I do have this problem as well, I've just started a job with Ruby and it took too many searches until I could find the official docs for some kind of syntax.
For Python I feel it's easy to find stdlib docs, but can be hard to find some specific things about the language itself in the official docs - sometimes it's too technical and I wish there was a more pragmatic middle ground.