5 ms·

A moment of sympathy for the engineers who have to explain their non technical project manager on why their application is getting this error.

rdtsc 8y ago
I learned my lesson not put cutesey messages in the logs the hard way. I was young and dumb and in my case it was for a restore from backup system. A customer had failed hardware and was trying to restore from backup. It was failing and the funny message all of the sudden didn't sound too funny when customer was reading it back to me in their own voice over the phone.
- DrJokepu 8y ago
  Oh I’ve done that too as a rookie. Software displayed an error message when the application was in a state that was impossible for it to be in, at least in theory. The error message was a line from 2001 Space Odyssey: “I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t let you do that”. Of course when it ended up getting displayed it was displayed to a customer called Dave who has never seen (or read) 2001 Space Odyssey. The first lesson was to avoid funny error messages in the future. The other was that “impossible” things tend to happen surprisingly frequently in software.
  - DoreenMichele 8y ago
    With 7 billion people on the planet, one in a million events are guaranteed to happen to about 7k people. Law of stats of large numbers etc
    - zitterbewegung 8y ago
      More like birthday theorem applies here .
    - mlyle 8y ago
      There's a lot of different possible 1 in a million events, though...
      - reificator 8y ago
        That is an excellent point actually...
      - DoreenMichele 8y ago
        True. I really intended it as 7k people will have had the same 1 in a million event. Sorry that wasn't clearer.
    - 1wd 8y ago
      "Million-to-one chances...crop up nine times out of ten." https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Million-to-one_chance https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Million-to-one_chance
    - opinionator1 8y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noid#Kenneth_Lamar_Noid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noid#Kenneth_Lamar_Noid
    - hinkley 8y ago
      A formulation of this I heard recently: As a lottery ticket buyer, you may not need to prepare for winning the lottery. But as a lottery commission employee, you had better prepare for someone winning.
  - imron 8y ago
    > The other was that “impossible” things tend to happen surprisingly frequently in software. "One in a million is next Tuesday" https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/larryosterman/2004/03/30/one-in-a-million-is-next-tuesday/ https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/larryosterman/2004/03/30/on...
    - teddyh 8y ago
      That article contains a link to (http://www.jumbojoke.com/000036.html http://www.jumbojoke.com/000036.html), but the link is broken. I found it at (https://web.archive.org/web/20050205043510/http://www.jumbojoke.com/000036.html https://web.archive.org/web/20050205043510/http://www.jumboj...).
  - dataflow 8y ago
    Wow, that's hilarious. Did he get creeped out at seeing his own name?
- incadenza 8y ago
  Yeah. Save the cheeky errors for internal tests.
  - zaxomi 8y ago
    Please don't even use it for internal tests... https://thedailywtf.com/articles/We-Burned-the-Poop https://thedailywtf.com/articles/We-Burned-the-Poop
    - incadenza 8y ago
      I meant internal test suite code. As in, the client / customer would have to be able to run my test suite (and likely watch it fail) to see the error code.
- gpvos 8y ago
  I've used "Nothing happens" (from ADVENT) when an unknown value was given for an "action" parameter. Appropriate, I still think, but a bit cute.
- tetha 8y ago
  Yeah, good logging and good error reporting are those things to learn by being burned by a funny message at 3 am, or being embarassed by a funny message. Usually both at the same time. It's amazingly frustrating to see: Hey if you just barfed the output of that failed command into a shell I could fix it but now I have to figure out why this several-hour command failed... bleh.
- digi_owl 8y ago
  Not just logs. Recent Opera versions have taken to replacing error messages in browser, with cutesy animated spaceships and whatsnot. A error message i can live with, an uninformative cartoon just drives me furious while trying to figure out what broke.
jogjayr 8y ago
Unless they're paying for NPM, my sympathy is limited. They should _really_ be putting Artifactory (or equivalent) between themselves and the public NPM registry. Or, at the very least, fallback package.jsons pointing to the source Github repos of each dependency. Anything at all so that npm install doesn't have a single point of failure.
commandlinefan 8y ago
I'm as technical as anybody who might be explaining this to anybody else, and I still don't understand why they're getting this error even after reading the linked thread and the comments here.

rdtsc 8y ago

I learned my lesson not put cutesey messages in the logs the hard way. I was young and dumb and in my case it was for a restore from backup system. A customer had failed hardware and was trying to restore from backup. It was failing and the funny message all of the sudden didn't sound too funny when customer was reading it back to me in their own voice over the phone.

DrJokepu 8y ago
Oh I’ve done that too as a rookie. Software displayed an error message when the application was in a state that was impossible for it to be in, at least in theory. The error message was a line from 2001 Space Odyssey: “I’m sorry Dave, I’m afraid I can’t let you do that”. Of course when it ended up getting displayed it was displayed to a customer called Dave who has never seen (or read) 2001 Space Odyssey. The first lesson was to avoid funny error messages in the future. The other was that “impossible” things tend to happen surprisingly frequently in software.
- DoreenMichele 8y ago
  With 7 billion people on the planet, one in a million events are guaranteed to happen to about 7k people. Law of stats of large numbers etc
  - zitterbewegung 8y ago
    More like birthday theorem applies here .
  - mlyle 8y ago
    There's a lot of different possible 1 in a million events, though...
    - reificator 8y ago
      That is an excellent point actually...
    - DoreenMichele 8y ago
      True. I really intended it as 7k people will have had the same 1 in a million event. Sorry that wasn't clearer.
  - 1wd 8y ago
    "Million-to-one chances...crop up nine times out of ten." https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Million-to-one_chance https://wiki.lspace.org/mediawiki/Million-to-one_chance
  - opinionator1 8y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noid#Kenneth_Lamar_Noid https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noid#Kenneth_Lamar_Noid
  - hinkley 8y ago
    A formulation of this I heard recently: As a lottery ticket buyer, you may not need to prepare for winning the lottery. But as a lottery commission employee, you had better prepare for someone winning.
- imron 8y ago
  > The other was that “impossible” things tend to happen surprisingly frequently in software. "One in a million is next Tuesday" https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/larryosterman/2004/03/30/one-in-a-million-is-next-tuesday/ https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/larryosterman/2004/03/30/on...
  - teddyh 8y ago
    That article contains a link to (http://www.jumbojoke.com/000036.html http://www.jumbojoke.com/000036.html), but the link is broken. I found it at (https://web.archive.org/web/20050205043510/http://www.jumbojoke.com/000036.html https://web.archive.org/web/20050205043510/http://www.jumboj...).
- dataflow 8y ago
  Wow, that's hilarious. Did he get creeped out at seeing his own name?
incadenza 8y ago
Yeah. Save the cheeky errors for internal tests.
- zaxomi 8y ago
  Please don't even use it for internal tests... https://thedailywtf.com/articles/We-Burned-the-Poop https://thedailywtf.com/articles/We-Burned-the-Poop
  - incadenza 8y ago
    I meant internal test suite code. As in, the client / customer would have to be able to run my test suite (and likely watch it fail) to see the error code.
gpvos 8y ago
I've used "Nothing happens" (from ADVENT) when an unknown value was given for an "action" parameter. Appropriate, I still think, but a bit cute.
tetha 8y ago
Yeah, good logging and good error reporting are those things to learn by being burned by a funny message at 3 am, or being embarassed by a funny message. Usually both at the same time. It's amazingly frustrating to see: Hey if you just barfed the output of that failed command into a shell I could fix it but now I have to figure out why this several-hour command failed... bleh.
digi_owl 8y ago
Not just logs. Recent Opera versions have taken to replacing error messages in browser, with cutesy animated spaceships and whatsnot. A error message i can live with, an uninformative cartoon just drives me furious while trying to figure out what broke.

jogjayr 8y ago

Unless they're paying for NPM, my sympathy is limited. They should _really_ be putting Artifactory (or equivalent) between themselves and the public NPM registry. Or, at the very least, fallback package.jsons pointing to the source Github repos of each dependency. Anything at all so that npm install doesn't have a single point of failure.

commandlinefan 8y ago

I'm as technical as anybody who might be explaining this to anybody else, and I still don't understand why they're getting this error even after reading the linked thread and the comments here.