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>I don't think that BeOS was as mature as NextStep BeOS was interesting but also kind of a joke. I remember trying it out and receiving error messages written

>I don't think that BeOS was as mature as NextStep BeOS was interesting but also kind of a joke. I remember trying it out and receiving error messages written as not-helpful haikus. I could only think that this was not a serious OS, and that was the end of BeOS for me. Here's a few: "Errors have occurred. We won't tell you where or why. Lazy programmers." "The code was willing. It considered your request, But the chips were weak." "Cables have been cut. Southwest of Northeast somewhere. We are not amused." As a programmer at the time, I was confounded by these awful error messages. It just made the whole thing seem like a joke. I had no time for this. I'd never consider writing software for a platform that obscured the error behind a haiku.

pavlov 2y ago
Is it really better to print “Unhandled exception” or “Internal server error”? Sometimes there just isn’t more context available to an error. This was even more the case 30 years ago, when errors were often nothing more than a numeric code — and then you look it up and it’s just some “unspecified data error.” BeOS tried to make light of that quandary.
- leptons 2y ago
  Just because the computer doesn't know why it crashed doesn't mean a human won't. At least print out a stack trace, or something, then print the haiku. Give someone a chance at figuring out what went wrong. Maybe there was a developer mode I wasn't aware of, but at least Windows at the time (3.1 and 95) was capable of giving the user some indication about what part of the software crashed, whether or not the user knew what to do with it. My first impression of the OS is what led me to avoid it, it's that simple. I don't know why other people didn't adopt it, I can't speak for them.
- Emigre_ 2y ago
  I think that probably is the case that the moment the computer throws an error, potentially having lost some work-in-progress data or any other "funny" consequence like that, is the moment the user is less likely to be receptive to jokes.
SllX 2y ago
Actually didn't know that about BeOS, and suddenly the name of the Haiku Project makes a lot more sense to me.
sillywalk 2y ago
I thought those haiku error messages were only in NetPositive (the BeOS web browser).

pavlov 2y ago

Is it really better to print “Unhandled exception” or “Internal server error”? Sometimes there just isn’t more context available to an error. This was even more the case 30 years ago, when errors were often nothing more than a numeric code — and then you look it up and it’s just some “unspecified data error.” BeOS tried to make light of that quandary.

leptons 2y ago
Just because the computer doesn't know why it crashed doesn't mean a human won't. At least print out a stack trace, or something, then print the haiku. Give someone a chance at figuring out what went wrong. Maybe there was a developer mode I wasn't aware of, but at least Windows at the time (3.1 and 95) was capable of giving the user some indication about what part of the software crashed, whether or not the user knew what to do with it. My first impression of the OS is what led me to avoid it, it's that simple. I don't know why other people didn't adopt it, I can't speak for them.
Emigre_ 2y ago
I think that probably is the case that the moment the computer throws an error, potentially having lost some work-in-progress data or any other "funny" consequence like that, is the moment the user is less likely to be receptive to jokes.

SllX 2y ago

Actually didn't know that about BeOS, and suddenly the name of the Haiku Project makes a lot more sense to me.

sillywalk 2y ago

I thought those haiku error messages were only in NetPositive (the BeOS web browser).