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This Message Does Not Exist

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Re: This Message Does Not Exist

#91

Post by mkl »

lisper wrote: post #85

Everyone is snickering at this and talking about philosophy, but there is actually a legitimate point being made here, albeit obliquely: how do you explain to a non-technical user that their data has been deleted on the server, but that their client still has a cached copy that they might want to try to salvage somehow? I submit that this is a nontrivial problem worthy of serious consideration.

> how do you explain to a non-technical user that their data has been deleted on the server, but that their client still has a cached copy that they might want to try to salvage somehow?

How about: "This message has been deleted from the mail server, but Outlook still has it in its temporary cache on this device. You can copy the message contents, or discard it from the cache, at which point it will be permanently deleted."

Re: This Message Does Not Exist

#92

Post by derefr »

tikhonj wrote: post #46
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.

It's still funny that the text of a message can exist without being a message itself. That must make sense in the specific context of Outlook, but it shows that the conceptual design of the software does not match how we want to think about the domain abstractly.

I would assume Outlook means that its locally-cached copy of the message exists, but the original server-side (probably IMAP) message no longer exists. And that without that message, there's no server-side resource to update — just a resource representation of a snapshot of that server-side resource, still temporarily persisted in a client-side read-through cache.

Re: This Message Does Not Exist

#94

Post by NemoNobody »

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.

Haha, this is one of the best comments I've read on HN

Re: This Message Does Not Exist

#96

Post by femto »

mkl wrote: post #91
lisper wrote: post #85

Everyone is snickering at this and talking about philosophy, but there is actually a legitimate point being made here, albeit obliquely: how do you explain to a non-technical user that their data has been deleted on the server, but that their client still has a cached copy that they might want to try to salvage somehow? I submit that this is a nontrivial problem worthy of serious consideration.

> how do you explain to a non-technical user that their data has been deleted on the server, but that their client still has a cached copy that they might want to try to salvage somehow? How about: "This message has been deleted from the mail server, but Outlook still has it in its temporary cache on this device. You can copy the message contents, or discard it from the cache, at which point it will be permanently de…

A typical person's head will explode at the mention of the words "cache" and "server". They will then go into a blind panic that their data is going to be "permanently deleted".

Re: This Message Does Not Exist

#97

Post by squeaky-clean »

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.

The author addresses this though. He calls it the contents instead of the text but it's the same thing.

> We learn a final affordance, which complicates the story. An inexistent message has contents, which may be copied – but only if the message has not yet been discarded.

The message is gone and can't be saved anymore, but it can still be discarded (or presumably not discarded).

Re: This Message Does Not Exist

#98

Post by phreack »

mkl wrote: post #91
lisper wrote: post #85

Everyone is snickering at this and talking about philosophy, but there is actually a legitimate point being made here, albeit obliquely: how do you explain to a non-technical user that their data has been deleted on the server, but that their client still has a cached copy that they might want to try to salvage somehow? I submit that this is a nontrivial problem worthy of serious consideration.

> how do you explain to a non-technical user that their data has been deleted on the server, but that their client still has a cached copy that they might want to try to salvage somehow? How about: "This message has been deleted from the mail server, but Outlook still has it in its temporary cache on this device. You can copy the message contents, or discard it from the cache, at which point it will be permanently de…

I'd say a non-tech user has no idea what a server or cache is. I'd go with the word "backup" instead. Something like telling them that email is not backed up (online? where?) and if they delete it from their computer it won't be able to be recovered.

Re: This Message Does Not Exist

#99

Post by bch »

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.

“Oh, that's the name of the song, is it?” Alice said, trying to feel interested.

Re: This Message Does Not Exist

#100

Post by OmarShehata »

mkl wrote: post #91
lisper wrote: post #85

Everyone is snickering at this and talking about philosophy, but there is actually a legitimate point being made here, albeit obliquely: how do you explain to a non-technical user that their data has been deleted on the server, but that their client still has a cached copy that they might want to try to salvage somehow? I submit that this is a nontrivial problem worthy of serious consideration.

> how do you explain to a non-technical user that their data has been deleted on the server, but that their client still has a cached copy that they might want to try to salvage somehow? How about: "This message has been deleted from the mail server, but Outlook still has it in its temporary cache on this device. You can copy the message contents, or discard it from the cache, at which point it will be permanently de…

this is the only correct answer. "a non-technical user has no idea what a server or cache is" sure, but they can learn. The average person is much smarter than you think they are (when it comes to matters that actually affect their day to day life). If they don't get your explanation, it's almost always because (1) they don't care, they don't see why it matters to them (it often doesn't) (2) you're not explaining it well enough

feynman has a nice philosophy on this that I think is true & useful: (that there's great variety in capability of the average person, we should explain things faithfully & without dumbing it down):

https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@omarshehata/1123783593602927...

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