#ErrorMessages

N-gated Hacker Newsngate
2025-05-14

🚨BREAKING NEWS🚨: The latest groundbreaking in data processing - a CSV tool that does absolutely nothing because it's too busy being "unavailable" 🤦‍♂️. Finally, a service that promises to revolutionize how you stare at error messages! 📉🔒
apps.microsoft.com/detail/9pfc

N-gated Hacker Newsngate
2025-05-10

📉 Google Gemini's latest has turned it into the digital equivalent of a Victorian schoolmarm, wagging its finger at anything remotely emotional. 🚫 Forget about using those apps for trauma recovery—you're now greeted with an error message as comforting as a brick wall. 🙄
theregister.com/2025/05/08/goo

Johnny Taylorjohnnydaux
2025-04-28

“Whilst it’s better to keep conversational, it’s important not to push it too far…Errors are moments of friction. Sometimes they’re unavoidable, but respecting our users means prioritising and … Whimsy can feel especially dismissive if a user is stressed or trying to complete something important. Imagine being late for a job interview and getting a “Whoopsie!” from the train ticketing app.”

piccalil.li/blog/how-to-write-

N-gated Hacker Newsngate
2025-03-30

🎉 Breaking News: has discovered the ultimate way to boost – by blocking everyone from accessing their site! 🚫🌐 Apparently, hitting a wall of error messages is exactly what we needed to not read about 'Xiaofeng Wang'. Who knew? 😂
researchgate.net/profile/Xiaof

effikaeffika
2025-02-23

Welp you still printed so I'm counting that as a win

A printer self-test page from CUPS. It has some Computer Stuff at the top, and then a box made with % signs. Inside the box it read "If you ccsn read this, you are using the wrong driver for your printer."
2025-01-23

Is #pixelfed down or is it just me?
#errorMessages #error

2025-01-22

Adding more beautiful error messages to Kitten. These should help make it easier to recover from common errors while authoring.

kitten.small-web.org

#Kitten #errorMessages #design #usability #authoring #SmallWeb #SmallTech #HTML #CSS #JavaScript #NodeJS #server #framework #platform #web #dev

Screenshot of Kitten error page with cute illustration of a grey kitten with pink ears and nose playing with a purple ball of yarn followed by the error message:

500
Error: Attempt to instantiate kitten.Component in markup without calling its connectedTo() static factory method:
In your kitten.html``, replace:

<{Uptime} />

With:

<{Uptime.connectedTo(this)} />

Finally, there’s a partial view of a stack trace that scrolls off the page.
2025-01-22

So last night, while recording the preview of Kitten’s¹ improved component model², I made a silly mistake (copying raw HTML into a JavaScript function instead of wrapping it in a kitten.html`` tagged template, easy to do when you’re refactoring to pull out components from pages).

Then, once I figured out what I’d done, I made another one by forgetting to return the value from the function (easy to do when you’re used to using one-line closures as render functions).

I would have caught both of those so much faster if Kitten had helpful error messages for those two pitfalls. And guess what, this morning, it does :)

Attached are screenshot showing the before and after error messages.

Enjoy!

:kitten:💕

¹ kitten.small-web.org
² Scroll up the thread to watch the video.

#Kitten #SmallWeb #PeerToPeerWeb #web #server #framework #platform #design #usability #errorMessages #authoring #dev #JavaScript #HTML #CSS #htmx #hypermedia #WebSocket #StreamingHTML #SmallTech

Screenshot of first error message (before):

500 TypeError: Cannot read properties of undefined (reading 'match')Screenshot of first error message (after):

Error: Render function did not return kitten.html``

class Count extends kitten.Component {
  html {
    kitten.html`<h1 morph>${kitten.db.counter.count}</h1>`
  }
  onIncrement {
    kitten.db.counter.count++
    this.update
  }
}Screenshot of second error message (before):

500 SyntaxError: Unexpected token '<Screenshot of second error message (after):

500  SyntaxError: Unexpected token '<

(Did you put raw HTML inside a function by mistake instead of wrapping it in a kitten.html`` tagged template?)
Maho Pacheco 🦝🍻mapache@hachyderm.io
2025-01-06

Pro tip: If your error message is longer than a tweet, it’s not user-friendly.

#userexperience #errormessages #techtips

Abdelfattah Ragababdelfattahragab
2024-12-24
Angular Reactive Forms: Everything you need to know by Abdelfattah Ragab
Jaro Reindersjaror@social.edu.nl
2024-12-12

Good error messages are hard, but it must be possible to do better than:

No instance for ‘MArray
(STArray s) Char Data.Functor.Identity.Identity’
arising from a use of ‘readArray’

For the program:

foo = runST do
ary <- newListArray (0,4) "hello" :: ST s (STArray s Int Char)
pure $ flip execState "" do
for_ [0..4] \i -> do
c <- lift $ readArray ary i
modify' (c:)

discourse.haskell.org/t/state-

#haskell #errormessages

2024-11-22

#errormessages to die for. #waze

error message in waze.  index 0
2024-09-24

Aaah the dulcet tones of the bottom falling out of your world when your Linux machine stalls during reboot and the only real error message amounts to:

"This is R0yally B0rked" *
----

[Several Hours later - In the grand tradition of "Turn it off and on again "
- Restarting a total of three times, (complete power downs) seems to have fixed all the problems.

::sigh:: ]

#Linux #ErrorMessages

Number1SummerJamNumber1SummerJam
2024-09-19

Can anyone translate broken Unicode for me?

A piece of software where all the text is displaying as question marks and random characters from various languages.
Michal Bryxí 🌱MichalBryxi@veganism.social
2024-09-19

What TypeScript says:

```
Type '{ name: string; kind: "alias"; options: { name: string; kind: "field"; type: string; options: {}; }; }' is not assignable to type 'FieldSchema'.
Property 'type' is missing in type '{ name: string; kind: "alias"; options: { name: string; kind: "field"; type: string; options: {}; }; }' but required in type 'AliasField'.
```

What I would wish it to say:

```
On line 44 add: `type: null`
```

Like how on earth is it possible to make a language that has such bad bad bad error messages? And intentionally ignore user complaints for years?

To not be old-man-yells-at-cloud:

1) Make it readable. Why is it that the example code is smushed to one-liner? Who can read code like that? Just prettify it across multiple lines.
2) Make it copy&pasteable. The parses is _theoretcially_ telling me _what_ to put _where_, but it would be way more practical if it'd just give me the code it expects. Even if it's just with `...` on places where it can't decide for me.
3) I'm actually surprised that I'm saying that, but on the side of telling me in words "but required in type 'AliasField'", give me also the excerpt of the type it violates with the pointer to that place. If I'm required to write TS, then I should be also able to read it and not translate from your-error-message-words -> TS.

#TypeScript #ErrorMessages #DX #WebDevelopment #CanWeDeprecateTypeScriptYet

John Faithfull 🌍🇪🇺🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🧡✊🏻✊🏿FaithfullJohn@mastodon.scot
2024-09-04

#ErrorMessages In a previous life I wrote and supported various bits of software. I am still secretly proud of this terrible error screen from my INCA museum catalogue, which I recently resurrected in a VM... Am I a bad person? 😂 #HardCheese #Software #UserInterfaces

A screenshot of an auld-style Windows XP error popup window. The title bar says: BLAST AND DRAT!!! 
and the window displays a form saying: 


HARD CHEESE! 

You have unearthed a bug or other program error. If the problem persists. noting the following values may help in tracing the problem:

 Program with error:  BREAKREL Error Number 52 Line number of enor: 7 Error Message: No table is in USE 
Line of code with error: No table is in USE
Linebyline→mastoart.sociallinebyline@bytetower.social
2024-08-31

I don't have a Tumblr account but I read a good few blogs over thataways. And it just gave me the following error:

"We're sorry.

"Service is temporarily unavailable. Our engineers are working quickly to resolve the issue.

"Find out why you may have encountered this error."

Mind you, there's no clickable link or further information accompanying that last sentence. Just an instruction to go find out. Like, "You figure it out. Good luck, buddy."

#ErrorMessages #Usability #Tumblr

Lukas Oppermannlukasoppermann
2024-07-03

When come across they are in need of help. It hurts their feelings and their if our are bad.

Some great tips by wix-ux.com/when-life-gives-you
- state what happend & reassure user
- provide a way to fix it
- provide way out of fixing doesn't work

A bad error message using inappropriate tone, passing the blame to the user, speaking in tech jargon and its too generic.
2024-04-03

Just improved the display of error messages in Kitten¹.

They should be far more robust now.

Run `kitten update` to get the latest.

:kitten:💕

¹ codeberg.org/kitten/app

#Kitten #errorMessages #stackTrace #web #dev #JavaScript #nodeJS

Screenshot of error message in browser: There’s a cute illustration of a kitten playing with a ball of purple yarn.

The error code (in pink) is 500. The error message reads ‘ReferenceError: meow is not defined’

Under that is a Stack trace split into two sections, ‘From your app’ and ‘From Kitten’.

In the first section, there’s a coed snippet shown with syntax highlighting, line numbers, and striped lines (white/pink):

export default () => kitten.html`
  ${meow}!
`

The ‘m’ in meow has a pink arrow head (caret) pointing to it.

The stack trace message reads:

While running PageRoute.default [as _handler]
in /index.page.js (line 2, column 5)

In the From Kitten section the following stack messages are visible:

While running PageRoute.lazilyLoadedHandler
in /kitten-bundle.js (line 239183, column 31)
While running loop
in /kitten-bundle.js (line 203214, column 65)
While running next
in /kitten-bundle.js (line 203215, column 73)
While running Array.<anonymous>
in /kitten-bundle.js (line 239777, column 9)

Client Info

Server: https://mastodon.social
Version: 2025.04
Repository: https://github.com/cyevgeniy/lmst