If I had a wish for christmas from GabeN or Valve in general, it would be actually meaningful error messages from steam.
If I had two wishes, I would like a community tool to share configs to make games work that require tweaking.
But I’d be very happy if I got better error messages.
It should provide more information, as to “which file”, “which drive”, and what caused the error like “not enough space” or “no rights to write” or whatever the hell it is. And maybe some other context depending on the circumstances. “Disk write error” is just too generic. It’s better than nothing, but the request and critique in this post is that it could and should be more detailed and helpful.
In theory, I’m inclined to agree with you. But error handling in your code is not at all straightforward. Just successfully catching an error so the program can exit gracefully can be difficult. Classifying different error conditions and displaying an appropriate message is even worse.
Basically, the logs exist for exactly this purpose. Just how it works.
it is wild for someone to say this immediately after saying “actually they can’t display the error because it’s too hard” and somehow not realize in the middle of typing how ridiculous it is trying to square those two claims.
additionally, every logging library worth using lets you log to multiple outputs, e.g. disk and screen.
Yes, and will outputting the log directly to screen help to make the error any less confiding?
And writing code that includes robust error catching and handling is simple, then?
No one asks to output the naked log line. There are a few more information that could be presented in a more readable and useful manner in a message box. Error messages are meant to be helpful, not to annoy without knowing what happened.
Even if you are right and the log contains the answer, why not trying to make more helpful Error messages? Does it hurt you?
I have nothing against helpful error messages, please understand; just pointing out this issue is not a trivial matter. It’s not like somebody is doing this just to intentionally annoy you, after all.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
No one argued it would be a trivial issue. But how do you know its not a trivial issue? To me this does not look like a hard thing to implement, its more a design choice and a design failure. If they have the data to write into log, they could have given SOMETHING more useful (like the filename in question) with the error message.
Well, for starters, your application is confirmed to not be operating correctly; essentially, you cannot necessarily count on anything behaving correctly. Another issue is parsing the log - while it’s not too difficult to check if it’s a disk related issue, accurately and successfully parsing the specific cause is maybe not so easy. It really depends, and depending on what the software does there are all sorts of odd little seeming issues that can make the whole process a headache.
Anyway, it is definitely nice when developers take the time to solve as many of the “little issues” involved as they can. Plenty of software out there that’s buggy and will just crash or glitch out. Can definitely be a breath of fresh air when shit works, or at least has errors that make sense. 😜
An error message does not mean the application didn’t operate correctly. Not able to write to disk, is a correct behavior with expected “errors”. The correct way to handle it depends on the application, but if it is about to show a message, then they could also incorporate more useful information that is already available.
Exactly why the developer should do it, not the end user. But if there is an error message, it does not necessarily mean they have to parse log files. In most cases most important and relevant information should be available already.
Maybe. But on the other side, it could also be a very simple process of adding a variable or a standard procedure. If there are discussions with 2000 pages about unclear error messages, then there is definitely something wrong. And the developers for this has to do something about it. Bringing attention to these issues is not a bad thing (although I don’t think Valve reads Lemmy posts).
I agree. At last…
Edit: The point is, the application shows an error message that it could not write the file to disk. What file? I mean it would at least know what file, otherwise it could not check for not able to write it.
If they can log it, then they can show it in the message.
How often do you read log files…?
Like, windows specifically stopped including the stack trace in the blue screen of death because of how rarely that proved to be necessary. And most log files are about as easy to parse, so…
Doesn’t matter. There is zero excuse for bad error messages.
it does. in the logs.
The error message should contain all the additions information, so that we don’t even need to parse and look into log files. There is no excuse for bad error messages.