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I thought this paper was very interesting on the topic: "Mind Your Language: On Novices' Interactions with Error Messages". One of the things that comes up, is

I thought this paper was very interesting on the topic: "Mind Your Language: On Novices' Interactions with Error Messages". One of the things that comes up, is that if the error message suggests a change, one of the risks is that such an edit can make the error go away, but the code will not be correct. By making a concrete suggestion, it tempts the programmer to just apply it without thinking. This is really interesting to me because it makes sense, and goes against many common ideas about how to make good error messages.

hyperrail 4y ago
> if the error message suggests a change, one of the risks is that such an edit can make the error go away, but the code will not be correct. [...] "Error messages: diagnostic is preferable to prescriptive" [1] is a riff on a similar theme, though the author of that blog post is focusing on error messages for Microsoft's C# compiler, which are more likely to be intended for experienced professional developers, so he is coming at the problem from a different perspective than the student-focused one of the paper you mentioned. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20060720004516/http://blogs.msdn.com/ericlippert/archive/2006/07/07/659259.aspx https://web.archive.org/web/20060720004516/http://blogs.msdn...