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This Message Does Not Exist

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Re: This Message Does Not Exist

#61

Post by m463 »

cortesoft wrote: post #36

Oh, finally a chance to put my Philosophy degree to use! The error says the "message" does not exist, but the message is not the same as the text. The message is an object that can be saved or discarded, and it contains text. The text still exists and can be copied, but the message is gone and can't be saved anymore.

if the message never achieved a physical form such as printing, does the message exist?

if the message stopped existing, but nobody was there, did it make the trash-can sound?

Re: This Message Does Not Exist

#62

Post by kstrauser »

ggarnhart wrote: post #44

This reminds of a choice I once saw between the following: “Save this Credit Card” Or “Never save this Credit Card” With hashing and things, the latter is certainly possible, but I got a good chuckle out of it.

Along those lines, "Don't use cookies on this site".

Re: This Message Does Not Exist

#63

Post by Dylan16807 »

routerl wrote: post #56
Dylan16807 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your pointer scenario could have the same warning, but it does not match the scenario in the post. In the post, we have """the message""" displayed on screen. It's not a simple dangling pointer, the contents are right there. We're standing inside the living room while saying the house doesn't exist. And as soon as we walk out the living room will disappear.

I'm sorry, I miss things nowadays, but I don't see where the post states that the message is still available. If it is, that's probably a desync issue, like others have said. Still not particularly mysterious or ontologically interesting. So much of parallel and distributed programming is about solving desync problems.

> I'm sorry, I miss things nowadays, but I don't see where the post states that the message is still available.

I put it in super scare quotes for a reason, because it depends on what you mean by "message".

But the text is still on the screen. That's why you can copy it.

> If it is, that's probably a desync issue, like others have said. Still not particularly mysterious or ontologically interesting. So much of parallel and distributed programming is about solving desync problems.

If it's just a desync, then it could resync things if it wanted to. Instead it gives a confusing and contradictory warning.

The way the warning contradicts itself is pretty interesting, and I and the author think it's fun to delve into how the word "message" is supposed to be defined here, and how it's causing problems.

But it's not simply a reference to a thing that's gone. It's not actually gone yet. It's a ghost.

Re: This Message Does Not Exist

#64

Post by mananaysiempre »

cortesoft wrote: post #36

Oh, finally a chance to put my Philosophy degree to use! The error says the "message" does not exist, but the message is not the same as the text. The message is an object that can be saved or discarded, and it contains text. The text still exists and can be copied, but the message is gone and can't be saved anymore.

Ceci n’est pas un message?

Re: This Message Does Not Exist

#65

Post by Groxx »

thwarted wrote: post #6

I've had similar philosophical thoughts about a transaction rollback. Consider this definition from go's database/sql package. func (tx *Tx) Rollback() error Rollback can fail, indicated as such by it can return an error. What are the cases where rollback could fail and what's the recovery mechanism? Does a failed rollback mean (logically) that the transaction is still open and uncommitted? But really, invoking rollb…

>Does a failed rollback mean (logically) that the transaction is still open and uncommitted?

Yes, it means exactly that until something else manages to close the transaction.

Generally that's done by noticing that the connection has failed, or a timeout has expired, assuming "roll back unless confirmed" is the default behavior (usually true, but not always).

The reason you might want to explicitly tell something to roll back is to shorten ^ that latency, or to wait for it to complete before doing something else that requires it to be gone.

Re: This Message Does Not Exist

#66

Post by m463 »

klysm wrote: post #4

This is the most Microsoft error message I have ever seen

Wouldn't a more microsoft message be about competing products failing to exist?

I've seen teams messages on firefox and safari about features not existing "download the teams native app!"

Re: This Message Does Not Exist

#67

Post by Dylan16807 »

haiku2077 wrote: post #35
shpx wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pending and rolled back are different transaction states. The former uses resources and locks and can prevent other transactions from happening. Rolling back a transaction twice probably indicates an error in your program, which Go's API is giving you a chance to report to yourself. Ultimately every network request can fail because of the Two Generals' Problem. Actually, every single operation on a computer can fail…

Falsehoods programmers believe: - Sleep(1) sleeps for exactly 1 second. - Sleep(1) sleeps for approximately 1 second. - Sleep(1) sleeps for at least 1 second. - Sleep(1) sleeps for an unknown, but short amount of time. Certainly not weeks, months or years.

"Approximately 1 second" is fine. You just have to keep in mind that other influences can block your program from running. Those other influences can trigger even if you don't sleep!

Re: This Message Does Not Exist

#68

Post by a1369209993 »

haiku2077 wrote: post #35
shpx wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pending and rolled back are different transaction states. The former uses resources and locks and can prevent other transactions from happening. Rolling back a transaction twice probably indicates an error in your program, which Go's API is giving you a chance to report to yourself. Ultimately every network request can fail because of the Two Generals' Problem. Actually, every single operation on a computer can fail…

Falsehoods programmers believe: - Sleep(1) sleeps for exactly 1 second. - Sleep(1) sleeps for approximately 1 second. - Sleep(1) sleeps for at least 1 second. - Sleep(1) sleeps for an unknown, but short amount of time. Certainly not weeks, months or years.

> Sleep(1) sleeps for approximately 1 second.

This is correct - Sleep(1) does sleep for approximately 1 second; the problem is you're confusing the 95% confidence interval (which might be as narrow as (999ms,1001ms) for some reasonable designs) with the absolute error bounds (which are (0ms,∞ms], and yes, the infinity end is inclusive).

Re: This Message Does Not Exist

#69

Post by redbell »

We used to hear that LLMs hallucinate but, apparently, we are witnessing the hallucination of apps now!

This reminds me of another quiet funny error message, again, from Microsoft about a Windows Phone error message telling users to "insert CD and Restart Your Computer" ( https://thenextweb.com/news/this-is-the-funniest-windows-err...)

Re: This Message Does Not Exist

#70

Post by verandaguy »

m463 wrote: post #61
cortesoft wrote: post #36

Oh, finally a chance to put my Philosophy degree to use! The error says the "message" does not exist, but the message is not the same as the text. The message is an object that can be saved or discarded, and it contains text. The text still exists and can be copied, but the message is gone and can't be saved anymore.

if the message never achieved a physical form such as printing, does the message exist? if the message stopped existing, but nobody was there, did it make the trash-can sound?

What substantial difference is there between a message being manifested physically via printing as opposed to having it be a collection of bits in specific states on your hard drive (or memory, for that matter)?
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