One of the least-appreciated skills in programming is writing anti-frustrating error messages. A good error message should make it self-evident (a) what the user did, (b) what acceptable inputs are, and (c) how to fix the problem. Can determine love or hate for your library.

Feb 22, 2022 · 4:24 PM UTC

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Replying to @gdb
PC load letter, what the fuck does that mean?!
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GIF
Replying to @gdb
(d) Not assist attackers with tuning their payloads to identify vulnerabilities
Replying to @gdb
Back in my day, you didn't get error messages (Windows 3.0.1), the machine just crashed - made debugging hard. Languages like Raku or Perl have a concept of LTA (Less Than Awesome) error messages which are considered a bug to be improved.
Replying to @gdb
I’d argue that the order should be reversed.
Replying to @gdb
If the error message provides all that information, it may as well fix the problem itself.
Replying to @gdb @nitind
People think of error messages almost as an afterthought, but in reality they’re an important part of your developer facing API
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Replying to @gdb
Completely agree. It’s gets super fun with multi-lingual applications.
Replying to @gdb
GPT-3 could help here!
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Replying to @gdb
This old C programmer says: Rust error messages are impressively helpful, most of the time.
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Replying to @gdb
Is this a shot at Java?
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