3 ms·
HRESULTs are well intentioned. They originated in OS/2; but Microsoft always seemed to use them half-heartedly. Users should not be seeing "08CAE5D012" error m
by rerdavies 3y ago
HRESULTs are well intentioned. They originated in OS/2; but Microsoft always seemed to use them half-heartedly.
Users should not be seeing "08CAE5D012" error messages. They should be seeing "Connection refused. (08CAE5D012)" messages, or "No connection. (83255321)" messages instead.
There's is a non-trivial protocol for translating HRESULTs into error text; but it is often not supported properly by Windows applications, or Windows OS components.
e.g. DirectX which returns generic 0x8004005 E_FAIL errors. Or the WinSock APIs, which return HRESULTs, but don't provide text message translations; or Microsoft Installers that report raw HRESULTs with no attempt to capture the associated error text.
With discipline, the entire system could have worked. But there wasn't, and it didn't.