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The importance of checking your error messages

centernetworks.com — "Since my first web site in 1995, error messages have always been a frustration for me. Working with hundreds of developers over the years, the error messages can really put egg on your face when you go live. Many times there are swear words in them, they are not properly formatted, the non-english speaking coders show through."

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OneManArmy 1 year 201 days ago, made popular 1 year 200 days ago

697 diggs
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RexDixon, on 10/12/2007, -60/+3I wrote a little blog post off of this one that CenterNetworks did that you might want to read - http://rexduffdixon.com/?p=1769

Rex
- SaxxonPike, on 10/12/2007, -1/+16What I wouldn't give to see some horribly translated message like "what a ***** go on?"
- ojk007, on 10/12/2007, -2/+13@Rex: please dont spam
  
  @article: It is very important to have error message that your target audience can understand. and i gotta admit, taking weeks to fix a 10min bug is a fkn pain..
- PARAPA, on 10/12/2007, -7/+3Error:
  
  Divide by zero.
  
  Comment not found.
- grimw, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Dude, don't spam about spamming; that's just as annoying... let moderation take care of it. At the very least he told you it was his own website. I didn't read the article he posted, but perhaps it actually had useful, insightful content.
chingy1788, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5programming tips
#1 write your tests first
#2 give meaningful error messages

thankyou COMP1911/1921 and R.Buckland from UNSW
- _HAM_, on 10/12/2007, -0/+23one of the worst habits I started when I first started programming was my style of debugging.
  
  Littering my programs with the printf, cout, messagebox statements to quickly track down bugs, and then removing them afterwards.
  
  That is not the problem, the problem is the output statements usually consist of "poop", "*****", "*****", "*****","*****", "*****", or even "ksdjfksdj".
  
  I'm always scared I missed removing one.
  
  I need to break that habit.
- Giga, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6@_ham_
  
  Just prefix your errors so it is something like: "*****, *****", etc. That way, you can still use your random swearing error messages but retain the ability to grep through your source code to find the statements.
- chingy1788, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2R. Buckland the lecturer taught us to put a bunch of error messages in controlled by one Defined constant that you change if you want to debug then compile (1911 was C for beginners, 1921 is based on algorithms and data structures, and further C programming)
- aflury, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3@_ham_
  
  I couldn't agree more. You should almost never put printf/cout/etc. debug output in your program. Instead, use a decent logging API (hell, even syslog would be adequate), and make your app configurable for different log levels such as debug/info/warn/error. Then you can always have your debugging output available if you need it. I've seen many cases where people spew crap to stdout for debugging, then comment out that code when it goes to production. It's so wrong on many levels. Commented-out code == bad. Inability to set different log levels in production == bad. Log messages like "*****!" == bad.
  
  I realize that you're mostly joking, but this is actually a common problem in a lot of real-world production software.
- aflury, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Then again, this article is geared towards error messages on web sites, so disregard the syslog part of my previous statement. The rest still applies.
enchanterku, on 10/12/2007, -16/+0Not to downplay the correctness of using good error messages, that 'null' could mean something to the programmer, i.e. it's supposed to display one certain field from a database, and the fact that it's null is pretty self-explanatory. But I do agree that this should have been fixed before going gold.
- pwill, on 10/12/2007, -1/+18Give up.
  Error messages need to mean something to the user. That's the idea of error messages.
- Beaver6813, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I have a feeling that null shouldn't have been outputted... well certainly not after going live. Once live, error messages should only be displayed via log files, the user should only see something crappy like:
  "oops, looks like we've encountered an error! "
DurtyJ, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1I was expecting a punchline. I was sadly dissapointed.
cr4ft, on 10/12/2007, -6/+2Reading error messages takes away from porn time
Bobski, on 10/12/2007, -6/+2@OneManArmy:
Dude, you stole my original avatar!
- kalleanka, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6Oh, you mean the avatar you in turn stole from some website?
- Bobski, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Well, here is is days later, but in fact you are dead wrong. I snagged the wallpaper from the Shrek DVD, cropped it, resized it and made it my own avatar very early on. That his is an exact duplicate of my recreation is testimony to my claim.... *****
funmike, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0Eagerly awaiting a cryptic error message when the site gets Dugg...
fquednau, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Guru meditation error
yahoofrom, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3null
yahoofrom, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1Digg down the above comment. it's error.
tommasz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4If you hire low-cost, non-English speaking coders you don't have the right to complain about their error messages.
- SteelChicken, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2no doubt! you get what you pay for, idiots, dont come crying to us when it comes around to bite you in the ass.
- lien, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I remember the good old Nokia and Linux helpfiles/manuals written by finns, not excactly the greatest english, but not low-cost.
whisperedlie, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3We have a strict policy of standardizing exception handling and instrumenting those exceptions. We also have a strict policy of canning developers that put inappropriate and/or unprofessional strings in those procedures. We enjoy a fun environment, and I have a great sense of humor (plus I can get loopy in those long hours too), but very few things are worse than when you are trying to troubleshoot a serious bug while sitting next to a very frustrated customer and a popup saying "Captain ***** Strikes Again" appears on the screen.

Fired. No questions. You just don't do it. Ever.
- Engival, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2I think I see your problem. You appear to be debugging programs while sitting next to a very frustrated customer.
- whisperedlie, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1oh that's right, because bugs or quirks never ever get through to production environments, and when they do, i can immediately summon in my mind the complete state of the application (including the exact steps the user was taking) at the time of the problem.
  
  also note i said troubleshoot, not debug.
mikehill33, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Hello Consumer? This is big business...

WE DONT CARE!!!
toxonix, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0'null' is the value of the message attribute of a NullPointerException in Java. It is not a good idea to just print the error message of a runtime exception to a customer facing screen. If an unexpected error occurs, just say 'An unexpected error occurred, please contact customer support' or something like that. Include a session id so the error can be found in the applications log files or monitoring system.
That said, this error should never have gotten past QA.
eburing, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0comment cannot be read because eburing failed to read error message
BigSlacker, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I kind of like the "The computer just called me a dumb ***** waste of air" trouble tickets.
meshman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Yes, do error messages properly. My error dialogs have titles like "Whoops", "Dumbass" and "*sigh*". People usually get a laugh out of them. Then there's the uptight types that get offended because "your program called me a dumbass". Yeah, it worked, didn't it!
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The importance of checking your error messages

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