This is a rant about how so many apps on many different platforms (TVs, mobile devices, computers, etc…) have decided to not actually show detailed errors any more. Instead, we get something along the lines of:

Oops, somehting went wrong. Please try again later

… and then, well, we get to figure out what just happened and what in the world we need to do about it. And good luck with that, since you have no idea what just failed.

Why software developers?!? Why have you forsaken us?

EDIT 24 hours later: I feel like I need to clarify a few things:

I’ve worked for 8 software companies over 30+ years. I know why putting a DB error into the message users see is a bad idea. I know that makes me uncommon, but I still want more info from these messages.

You all are answering as if there are only two ways this can work: (a) what we have now (which is useless), and (b) a detailed error listing showing a full stack trace. I think the developers could meet me half-way.

What I want is either (a) “Something went wrong on the server, you can’t fix it, but we will” or (b) “Something on your end didn’t work. Check your network or restart the app or do something differently and then try the same thing again”. And if they’re blocking me because I’m using a VPN, fucking say so (but that’s a whole separate thing…)

Some apps do provide enough info so I have a clue what I should do next, and I appreciate the effort they put into helping me. I think what I am really ranting about is I want more developers to take the time to do this instead of reporting all errors with “Oops, try again”. (If the error is in their server, why should I try again?) Give me a hint as to the problem, so I have something to go on.

Cheers y’all. Still love you my techy brothers and sisters.

  • unhrpetbyEnglish
    1·
    7 hours ago

    Ridiculous take. I have debugged countless issues. Those that spit detailed error messages are typically far easier to debug than those that don’t.

    For example, returning nothing but exit code 1 to indicate failure. This gives zero information about the reason behind the failure, and only could be acceptable if your program is so simple as to only have very few failure modes.

    I have solved issues by cloning the source code and reading it to understand the issue.

    Don’t relegate everyone to the same fate as those so utterly ignorant they can’t look up an error code.

    As for the bugs you can’t fix? Why do you think Cloudflare tells you when its the website having an issue, and not your browser or them? Knowing the issue isn’t something you can change, avoids spending time trying to fix an issue that you have no control over.

    People who can will write up a bug report anyway

    And report what exactly? Your program gives zero information has to why it failed? Now you have dropped the responsibility of figuring that out from the code, which tends to know far more about its failure state, to someone observing from afar. Its inefficient and ridiculous.

    I disagree with you across the board.