Please copy and paste the text of the error | Hacker News Reader

Please copy and paste the text of the error

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51 pointsjordigh37 comments

I initially attributed this kind of omission as originating from laziness or just not knowing how to copy-and-paste* into their email client. Now I think it actually stems from a much bigger problem: the average computer user's inability to understand cause-and-effect, and their belief that there is just "the error", with a corresponding "the solution", because they think there is only one reason (and not really a real "reason", as it seems to be only understood by "neckbeards") that a computer error could occur.

Thus, it's not laziness, just something that logically follows from the erroneous assumption that there is only one kind of error, and thus, a competent programmer should automatically know the one solution to it.

* In terms of people not being able to copy-and-paste...just because they can do it in Word doesn't mean they realize that function exists in other apps. Take Google's finding that 90% of users didn't know how to use Ctrl-F (http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/08/crazy-...)....just a couple days ago, in the final week of my programming class, one of my students was amazed when I did a Ctrl-F in the terminal.

I originally wrote this when I worked at Facebook. The intended audience (who were submitting these reports at the time) was professional software engineers.

As a professional software engineer I can confirm that many of our rank have some sort of blind spot when it comes to error messages.

Many time someone has commented "I don't know why this build is failing!", and a quick search for "Error" in the build log reveals the exact cause.

My current pet peeve is an error message that reads "This application requires <dependency A>. <Dependency A> can be installed from <url>". If I had $1 for every time someone said "I don't know how to fix this".

That's quite funny. I read the headline and thought "OMG, nobody at HN needs to hear that message, comeon!"

Interesting thought. In many cases I've had its the first case (not knowing how to copy and paste).

But this reasoning makes a lot of sense for the ones I get from people that definitely know copy-and-paste. For these folks, I get a screenshot and/or text of the error but still the "its broken" without much else.

I…I…I never even thought of using CMD+F in the terminal. It just never occurred to me. CTRL+R, sure. But not CMD+F. ~Two decades of scrolling back through hundreds of lines looking for a single piece of output. Well now don't I feel like an idiot.

Oh my god.

You are not alone.

Another possible factor: some people suffer from a kind of "error blindness", when the computer shows them some text, even really simple text, they don't seem to be able to see it, almost like their optic nerve is censoring the text.

You can write your program so that on error it shows a message like:

"Push the red button"

... and many users will just stare at the screen and proclaim "I don't know what to do, what's wrong with it? How do I get back to the thing?"

That may be the 'cry wolf' thing. There are so many pointless dialogs pushed into your face, you stop reading them. Install any package, and pound on 'Next' until the damn thing finishes installing. We're trained to ignore them in this way.

Not sure what terminal you're using, but CTRL+F on a terminal is pretty non-stadard.

I wanted to make sure it's not me who's using the terminal that's different, but it's not the case, bash's doc state that "Ctrl+F: Forward one character".

A lot of users have been trained by viewing years of essentially meaningless error messages: "Program has encountered a problem and needs to close", "Error!" or something which actually useful, but its by no means understandable to non-programmers.

Maybe people complaining about not being sent errors should make the errors themselves more approachable.

Or just make the programs automatically send error reports.

I agree with you :)

I built an app that gives nice "errors" the main problem users just don't read stuff. Example:

The user tries to import a excel file with products, The program gives the error message: The product "12321" can not be imported as it is no longer manufactured.

User then asks why can't i import all products in this file?

As a programmer I think it's our duty to gather errors, it's not the user job.

Some thoughts:

- Write everything in log files

- Include a big button "send error to the programmer" which sends the log file

- If you really need to display codes, make them short (like yourinteger.to_s(36).upcase in ruby)

- Write friendly error messages that are informative and constructive, if possible write a solution in the message. NO: Cannot write file. YES: I was unable to save your document because your hard drive is full. You may delete unimportant files to gain space (like downloads) or you may try to save the file on another device (external drive, network drive…).

This is the right answer.

Most error dialogs I see on Windows/OSX systems are not text that can be cut and pasted. You have to take a screen shot.

Which will most likely be sent to you as a Word doc...

or pasted into MS Paint and then emailed as a 4Mb bitmap.

You can actually just hit ^C to copy the text of standard Windows errors even though the text is not selectable.

I don't know about OSX, but most of the Windows dialogs I see can easily be copypasted. Ctrl-C the dialog box, open a text editor/new email/et c, Ctrl-V it in. Unless you're doing something convoluted and making your own error dialogs.

Is it possible to make these titles just a little bit more descriptive of the content? I enjoy reading hackernews but increasing see these completely vague titles that tell nothing about the link. Some of us are pressed for time.

The error is meaningless to the user (else they'd fix the problem instead of asking for your help), so it's no shock that sending the (meaningless) text to you is not the first thing that comes to mind.

That said, computers (and other complex machinery) have been integral to modern life for some time now. It's unfortunate that we're still graduating people from school that don't know how to make a useful bug report.

> The error is meaningless to the user (else they'd fix the problem instead of asking for your help), so it's no shock that sending the meaningless text to you is not the first thing that comes to mind.

That's a good point, and implies that the better the error message, the dumber the support requests you'll get about it because they're the only ones left.

Sadly, the people who will see this are not the people who need to see this.

Now you have something convenient and funny to show to the people who need to see it.

If you can display an error message, you should be able to record it too. If a network error occurs and prevents the client from phoning home, log the error and send it later.

I'd much rather the tools I use on my computer _didn't_ phone home to report every time I use them incorrectly or they emit an error for whatever reason.

Edit: you could say “record the error and give the option to report it” but that's a whole lot of extra complexity, both UI and code. Especially for a bunches of single-purpose composable tools.

Even better track every error your app or web app or whatever shows a user. Even if the user doesn't tell you anything, at least the app or web app or whatever will.

While it is extremely valid to say that the error message should be more meaningful to users, they should. I often find myself in situations where people are asking me for support (co-workers not customers) on related tools and products which I have no control over.

In this case, please, please, please copy and paste the error message or send a screenshot.

And for those using TortoiseGit 'git did not exit cleanly (exit code 128)' does not count as an error message. #ScrollUp

In case anyone is interested, this is normally what I send to my users so they properly document issues for me:

https://github.com/backticks/issue-documentation

Feel free to fork and stylize as you want.

Sometimes I think that we should really reconsider the way we allow people to use computers. You need a license to drive a car, and IMHO perhaps it should be the same with computers - at least the more complex systems - this would solve a lot of issues.

Just my two cents.

The same thing applies to searching for the cause/resolution to a problem. I don't know how many times I've had to encourage my parents to just Google the text of the error message they see, and read the first few results.

Reminds me of Eric Raymond's "How To Ask Questions" guide.

http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

The last two lines of the post :D

Subject: Irony

There is a spelling error in the error message I received.

Please.

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