3 ms·

If people see a wall of text, they (from my observation) tend to skip it and conclude that the thing "just doesn't work". Even if the error is explained. So in

If people see a wall of text, they (from my observation) tend to skip it and conclude that the thing "just doesn't work". Even if the error is explained. So in that, they have a point. A little related are overly elaborate efforts to be cute and cheer up the user on error. (This of course happens more in Web GUI than in command line.) These can be infuriating and make one wish someone expended all this effort and money to actually make the thing work, instead of lecturing me not to get mad, with pictures. But I think terseness is an imperfect proxy for clarity. In the Google search example, repeating the search query to the user may be actually useful. They may have pasted something by accident and/or heavily mistyped and not even have noticed. Do include important information, so the user can go directly to the place of fault. State what is wrong and try not to have the same message for many unrelated errors. By the way, I'm still waiting for an "Unreasonable effectiveness of X considered harmful" article.

jasperry 6y ago
Strong agree. One of the things that turned me off of Elm, which is famous for having useful error messages, is the cutesy anthropomorphic style they are written in. More thorough error messages can be good, but they need to be well formatted to help people's eyes lock on to the core message; then they can read more if they need to. One thing I like about Python's error messages is that, even though you can get a long trace, the most specific/relevant information is usually at the bottom, right next to your prompt. I tell me students, "read your Python error messages from the bottom up."
- Kwpolska 6y ago
  The bottom-up nature of Python’s exceptions is also handly if you’re running a Python thing in a terminal, or are running `tail -f` on its logs. Java, on the other hand, puts the important bits at the top, so if your tracebacks are long and your screen isn’t too tall, you’re forced to scroll up.

jasperry 6y ago

Strong agree. One of the things that turned me off of Elm, which is famous for having useful error messages, is the cutesy anthropomorphic style they are written in. More thorough error messages can be good, but they need to be well formatted to help people's eyes lock on to the core message; then they can read more if they need to. One thing I like about Python's error messages is that, even though you can get a long trace, the most specific/relevant information is usually at the bottom, right next to your prompt. I tell me students, "read your Python error messages from the bottom up."

Kwpolska 6y ago
The bottom-up nature of Python’s exceptions is also handly if you’re running a Python thing in a terminal, or are running `tail -f` on its logs. Java, on the other hand, puts the important bits at the top, so if your tracebacks are long and your screen isn’t too tall, you’re forced to scroll up.