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When life gives you lemons, write better error messages

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Re: When life gives you lemons, write better error messages

#11

Post by CM30 »

I think this post has some interesting points, but it kinda misses a few more as well.

First, appropriate tone depends heavily on the product or service in question. A bank or otherwise serious business should probably not be giving messages like "whoops, something went wrong". But an entertainment product could have those sorts of messages, and treat it as part of the overall experience.

Secondly, I'm not a huge fan of error messages that don't give actionable feedback for how to fix the issue. Yes, a lot of users don't need that sort of information, but some sort of error code or technical reference can be handy for more involved support processes.

So, if the product or service is business orientated, maybe have that info in a dropdown box or something, where a support agent can ask the user to find it if an issue keeps occurring. And of course, if the product or service is aimed at technical people (like an open source infrastructure project), maybe just skip the casual language and just get to the point.

Re: When life gives you lemons, write better error messages

#12

Post by [deleted] »

magicalhippo wrote: post #2

Error: File not found Which file?!?!?! Anyway, I disagree strongly on the technical jargon. Ok, if it's not really an error and the user can retry or similar sure. But if it's bad times, an exception or similar, don't care about the user. Instead include as much detail as you need. A non-technical user won't be able to do anything anyway, and a sanitized error message means support or a technical user has a much hard…

[deleted]

Re: When life gives you lemons, write better error messages

#14

Post by dec0dedab0de »

magicalhippo wrote: post #2

Error: File not found Which file?!?!?! Anyway, I disagree strongly on the technical jargon. Ok, if it's not really an error and the user can retry or similar sure. But if it's bad times, an exception or similar, don't care about the user. Instead include as much detail as you need. A non-technical user won't be able to do anything anyway, and a sanitized error message means support or a technical user has a much hard…

Agreed, but you can have both. A simple error for the user to understand, and a click for more details that spits out all the troubleshooting information.

Re: When life gives you lemons, write better error messages

#16

Post by ozim »

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #14
magicalhippo wrote: post #2

Error: File not found Which file?!?!?! Anyway, I disagree strongly on the technical jargon. Ok, if it's not really an error and the user can retry or similar sure. But if it's bad times, an exception or similar, don't care about the user. Instead include as much detail as you need. A non-technical user won't be able to do anything anyway, and a sanitized error message means support or a technical user has a much hard…

Agreed, but you can have both. A simple error for the user to understand, and a click for more details that spits out all the troubleshooting information.

It depends.

If you’re SaaS vendor you should give troubleshooting information to your support team skipping the user. User should get “our support team received the error” and support should handle it directly.

“Something went wrong, try again later” is also acceptable but only if support team gets info about it and user really ca just try later.

Re: When life gives you lemons, write better error messages

#17

Post by dmd »

ozim wrote: post #16
dec0dedab0de wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, but you can have both. A simple error for the user to understand, and a click for more details that spits out all the troubleshooting information.

It depends. If you’re SaaS vendor you should give troubleshooting information to your support team skipping the user. User should get “our support team received the error” and support should handle it directly. “Something went wrong, try again later” is also acceptable but only if support team gets info about it and user really ca just try later.

I have approximately zero confidence that if I see an error message that says "our support team received the error" that anyone has received the error.

In fact I would generally bet thousands of dollars against that.

Re: When life gives you lemons, write better error messages

#18

Post by appplication »

ozim wrote: post #16
dec0dedab0de wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, but you can have both. A simple error for the user to understand, and a click for more details that spits out all the troubleshooting information.

It depends. If you’re SaaS vendor you should give troubleshooting information to your support team skipping the user. User should get “our support team received the error” and support should handle it directly. “Something went wrong, try again later” is also acceptable but only if support team gets info about it and user really ca just try later.

> “our support team received the error”

Oh good, I guess I’ll expect to hear back never.

I think it’s a good thought but we’ve been conditioned that these things are black holes. User should have all agency in escalating or continuing troubleshooting rather than implied wait for deus ex machina from the support team.

Re: When life gives you lemons, write better error messages

#19

Post by EvanAnderson »

mandevil wrote: post #4
magicalhippo wrote: post #2

Error: File not found Which file?!?!?! Anyway, I disagree strongly on the technical jargon. Ok, if it's not really an error and the user can retry or similar sure. But if it's bad times, an exception or similar, don't care about the user. Instead include as much detail as you need. A non-technical user won't be able to do anything anyway, and a sanitized error message means support or a technical user has a much hard…

Depends on exactly the situation- when I worked on a very expensive desktop application years ago I was warned about giving too much information in error messages as it might help crackers. With how powerful Ghidra is now, I'm not sure that it matters much any more.

> Depends on exactly the situation- when I worked on a very expensive desktop application years ago I was warned about giving too much information in error messages as it might help crackers.

As a sysadmin (having spent 30 years dealing with desktop software) the attitude of the people who gave you that direction make me seethe with anger. Crackers gonna crack. That just hurts the people who have to make the product work in their environment.

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