3 ms·
"But as it turns out, the best predictor of a programmer’s ability to notice and correct an error is not good error-message text—it’s accurate and precise sourc
by dllthomas 11y ago
"But as it turns out, the best predictor of a programmer’s ability to notice and correct an error is not good error-message text—it’s accurate and precise source locations."
I believe a part of this is training not to read the error message text, by years of error message text not worth reading.
I certainly wouldn't go so far as to say that this accounts for all (or even most) of the effect, though.
- viraptor 11y agoI thought "that's silly". Then I thought what I do when I get a compiler error. Most of the time I look at the line number, go to the source, try to figure out the mistake quickly, if nothing is obvious only then go back to the error and actually read what it said. You're right - I was taught for a long time that the compiler will usually say something like "unexpected ':'" - which is in most cases absolutely useless.
- digi_owl 11y agoSame reason why a dialog box is useless these days, as people have seen so many that they hit yes by muscle memory. In essence, computer logic and the monkey hind brain don't mix...