Programming Error Messages
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Messages of All Time They're rarely helpful. Actually, they usually add insult to injury. But what would computing be without 'em? Herewith, a tribute to a baker's dozen of the best (or is that worst?). By Harry McCracken | computer error messages list Thursday, September 18, 2008 at 5:28 am "To err is human, but to really foul
Error Messages Examples
things up you need a computer." So goes an old quip attributed to Paul Ehrlich. He was right. One of the defining things
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about computers is that they-or, more specifically, the people who program them-get so many things so very wrong. Hence the need for error messages, which have been around nearly as long as computers themselves.. In theory, error messages
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should be painful at worst and boring at best. They tend to be cryptic; they rarely offer an apology even when one is due; they like to provide useless information like hexadecimal numbers and to withhold facts that would be useful, like plain-English explanations of how to right want went wrong. In multiple ways, most of them represent technology at its most irritating. In fact, people have an emotional attachment to many of them-like Proust's Madeleine, funny computer error messages an error message from a machine out of your past can transport you back in time. That's a big part of why people form clubs to celebrate them, have them tattooed on their person, chronicle them for Wikipedia, and name albums after them. An entire company, the wonderfully-named Errorwear, exists to emblazon the images of such classic errors as the Blue Screen of Death (in four variations!), Guru Meditation, Red Ring of Death, and Sad Mac on T-shirts. And then there's this article-my stab at rounding up the major error messages of the past thirty years or so. I ranked them on a variety of factors, including how many people they bedeviled over the years, their aesthetic appeal or lack thereof, and the likelihood that they were notifying you of a genuine computing disaster. Your rankings probably differ from mine, which is why this story ends with a poll on the last page. Ready? Let's work through the list, starting with number thirteen and working our way up to the greatest error message of 'em all. 13. Abort, Retry, Fail? (MS-DOS) In many ways, it remains an error message to judge other error messages by. It's terse. (Three words.) It's confusing. (What's the difference between Abort and Fail?) It could indicate either a minor glitch (you forgot to put a floppy disk in the drive) or cata
on our websites. And they happen in real life. Sometimes it’s because we made a mistake. Or maybe a system failed. Maybe it really was the user’s fault. types of error messages in computer Whatever the cause, these errors—and how they are communicated—can have a huge impact on common computer error messages the way someone experiences your website or app. Often overlooked, an ill-constructed error message can fill users with frustration, and send them error message generator packing. A well-crafted error message, on the other hand, can work wonders. It can turn a moment of frustration (abandonment) into a moment of delight (and ideally, conversion). Every error, regardless of who is to http://www.technologizer.com/2008/09/18/errormessage/ blame, becomes a point of friction for your users. Well-written error messages can help reduce that friction. As UX designers, we like to reduce friction. So let’s get on with it. Introducing the 4 H’s So how do we write, or rewrite, our error messages to keep our users on track? It’s not that difficult, really. We just need to consider the 4 H’s of writing error messages. Error messages need http://uxmas.com/2012/the-4-hs-of-writing-error-messages to be: Human Helpful Humorous Humble Let’s look at these more closely. 1. Human The number one rule is to make sure your error messages sound like they’ve been written for humans. There’s nothing more frustrating than an error like this one. It sounds like it has been written by a robot. For a robot. Put your customer service hat on—think of your error message as a conversation with your user. Make sure it’s polite, understandable, friendly and jargon-free. The Firefox error message is a better example. Think about your audience. How would you explain the error to them, in human speak? Write those words down. That’s your error message, right there. 2. Helpful OK, so your error message is readable. But is it helpful? The rules to crafting helpful error messages are fairly straightforward. Ask yourself: Is it visible? There’s no point displaying an error message if the user doesn’t even see it. Think about the message size, colour and location of your error messages. Make them prominent. Does it explain clearly what went wrong? Your error message needs to explain the problem as clearly as possible. And it needs to be specific. A vague error message that says, “An unexpected system error has occurred” is just lazy programming.
tour help Tour Start here for a quick overview of the site Help Center Detailed answers to any questions you might have Meta Discuss the workings and policies of this site About Us Learn more about Stack Overflow the company Business Learn more about http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/98034/how-do-you-assign-error-codes hiring developers or posting ads with us Software Engineering Questions Tags Users Badges Unanswered Ask Question http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/209693/best-practices-to-create-error-codes-pattern-for-an-enterprise-project-in-c _ Software Engineering Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for professionals, academics, and students working within the systems development life cycle who care about creating, delivering, and maintaining software responsibly. Join them; it only takes a minute: Sign up Here's how it works: Anybody can ask a question Anybody can answer The best answers are voted up and rise to the top error message How do you assign error codes? up vote 9 down vote favorite 1 How, when developing a medium sized project, do you identify, create and maintain error codes? I for the life of me can't think of a simple and clean method of doing so. Some of my ideas convert class names and method name into an integer string, but that is way to long to display to the user on top of the fact that method names and computer error messages class names may change (hopefully not!). Others are just using an incrementing log system (ie. when ever I create a new error message, just add 1 to the last error message id). But that is just completely unorganized. To be more specific I am talking about error code such as: Error 401 Unauthorized. error-messages share|improve this question edited Oct 20 '14 at 21:56 Robert Harvey 127k30282462 asked Aug 2 '11 at 20:05 AedonEtLIRA 4481714 1 error codes? Like "magic numbers"? For instance... ERROR 001. Then you go to a list and read ERROR 001 means that bla bla bla... Yes? –wleao Aug 2 '11 at 20:15 @wleao - Yessir. I will edit my question to encompass that. Thank you. –AedonEtLIRA Aug 2 '11 at 20:15 read this: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magic_number_%28programming%29 –wleao Aug 2 '11 at 20:17 As you edited in your question. Take look at how they do it with http. I don't know if it's a good idea to use magic numbers at all. However, if you're really willing to do it, follow their concepts. For instance, they have a taxonomy of errors (do you have that?). –wleao Aug 2 '11 at 20:20 @wleao - not yet, but thanks to you and Péter Török, I will definetly be creating one. :) –AedonEtLIRA Aug 2 '11 at 20:24 | show 7 more comments 4 Answers 4 active oldest votes u
tour help Tour Start here for a quick overview of the site Help Center Detailed answers to any questions you might have Meta Discuss the workings and policies of this site About Us Learn more about Stack Overflow the company Business Learn more about hiring developers or posting ads with us Software Engineering Questions Tags Users Badges Unanswered Ask Question _ Software Engineering Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for professionals, academics, and students working within the systems development life cycle who care about creating, delivering, and maintaining software responsibly. Join them; it only takes a minute: Sign up Here's how it works: Anybody can ask a question Anybody can answer The best answers are voted up and rise to the top Best Practices To Create Error Codes Pattern For an Enterprise Project in C# [closed] up vote 13 down vote favorite 15 I'm working on an enterprise project which will be deployed in many SMBs and Enterprises. The support for this project would be struggling and so I want to create a coding pattern for errors (Like HTTP status Codes). This will enable help desk people to refer to documents and troubleshoot the problems as soon as possible. What are the best practices and recommendations to do this? Any help to do this will be useful. c# programming-practices error-handling enterprise-development share|improve this question edited Aug 28 '13 at 7:29 Kilian Foth 65.8k19179212 asked Aug 28 '13 at 6:58 Pooya 204137 closed as too broad by gnat, gbjbaanb, GlenH7, Yusubov, MichaelT Aug 28 '13 at 17:01 There are either too many possible answers, or good answers would be too long for this format. Please add details to narrow the answer set or to isolate an issue that can be answered in a few paragraphs.If this question can be reworded to fit the rules in the help center, please edit the question. 1 There are either too many possible answers, or good answers would be too long for this format. Please add details to narrow the answer set or to isolate an issue that can be answered in a few paragraphs. And what have you tried so far. –Ben McDougall Aug 28 '13 at 7:29 Depends on how your business is structured. In C# we always gave the user the possibility to mail us the StackTrace or copy/paste it from the error message details (we had