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.
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The why is easy. As others said, the vast majority of error messages are entirely useless for you, the user, because there’s not a single thing you can possibly do to address it. What are you gonna do about a database connection issue, or bad cache, or broken Javascript? Nothing. So don’t worry about it. Besides people are less panicky when they see an oops rather than a stack trace or a cryptic error message.
And don’t worry, people who know how to write up useful support tickets and bug reports know how to do it even when all they can see is an “oops”. Builtin browser dev tools will have information they can use to help the devs.
See my update/EDIT above. I feel like most of the replies here are on the same track as you but I still think there’s a better way.
Never show the customer a big scary error message. In the unlikely event something goes wrong, dispatch an error event so the engineers can track the issue. They’ll pull detailed logs, and know what to do. Meanwhile, guide the customer to return later with the error screen, and collect their userId if possible. Once the issue is fixed, send them an apology email to let them know they should try again
Most companies just follow the first half of that process, unfortunately
Yah, I love that idea of follow up but I imagine if the software is used by hundreds of thousands or more people, they can’t follow up on every case.You’d think that could be largely automated but who knows.
Look, the majority of the software is on the server end. Even if they gave you a full stack trace, and you understood it, you wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. You want them to give you a way to send in a merge request? I’m sure that would be received here as Google exploiting you for free.
Error messages are a common way for hackers to gain information about a system. Useless error messages are recommended for security.
If you enter your username as Robert’'); DROP TABLE Students;-- giving the error “Oops, something went wrong” is better than “NoSuchTable: ‘Students’ Table doesn’t exist in the database” because now the hacker knows you’re using a database that interprets SQL commands and inputs aren’t being sanitized.
Hacking programs like Burp Suite have functions that spam sites with all kinds of garbage data and uses error messages and delays in response times to highlight potential vulnerabilities.
Yeah but most of these errors don’t even give out a uuid that could be used to relate the error to logs to be resolved by someone.
Not that that someone exists anyway. Let’s face it the entire industry is a massive joke and a pile of shit and with AI coming fast and hard soon you won’t even get the privilege of venting to a call center person about it.
You’ll vent to some made-up chatbot named veeblezorp and he will give you an impromptu therapy session about the state of the world. Your computer/tablet/phone/app still won’t work properly and veeblezorp will try to get you through the stages of grief about that.
Just unplug it and don’t plug it back in again. Go for a walk. Play with the dog. Hug your children. Stop buying crap online that scales up infinitely to take new customers (and their dollars) but is forever stuck at the sub-garage startup level when it comes to support.
This comment belongs on masterhacker
So in short it’s used to mask the developers errors?
What are you planning to do with information about the error? It’s not like these places have customer support. Usually it’s something like a caching layer failing, and there’s literally nothing you can do about that.
If it’s an error code I’ve worked around before, apply same troubleshooting.
If its a new errror code, search the error code to see how other people solved it.
If no one else has solved the error code, try analogous troubleshooting, post results online with the error code name, successful or not.
I agree with Nouveau_Brunswick here.
And to add: to @hperrin@lemmy.ca , are you not also a user of software and do you not see room for improvement in many apps? That’s where I am rn: I just want them to try harder to communicate a tiny bit more info when things go so wrong that a message has to be displayed on my screen. Telling me “There’s nothing you can do to fix the problem” would be a big help, for instance. Make sense?
I am a developer of software. I can guarantee you that what you’re asking for would make my job harder, because I’ve done it, and it has made my job harder. If an error is transient (like, a caching layer error, a db connection error, an external API error, an endpoint connectivity error, etc), giving the user an error code will make it more likely that they’ll file a useless bug report or support ticket. The errors are all logged internally, and we can see when there is a spike in the error count. There’s no reason to give the user an error code, because there’s nothing helpful that the user can do with it, and there’s a lot of unhelpful things a user can do with it.
There are times where a message to the user is appropriate, like if they made a mistake with their input. But there are so many things that could go wrong that the user can’t do anything about. You’re not going to work around your DB shard going down, and a replica will replace it in a few seconds anyway, so giving you an error code does more harm than good. Telling you to try again later is exactly what I would tell you if you filed a support ticket. I don’t want to deal with useless support tickets, and you don’t want to deal with useless error messages.
Modern software stacks are big, complex systems with lots of failure points. We monitor them, and we can tell when you see these errors. If we chose to not show you a specific error code/message, there’s almost definitely a good reason.
Because 99% of the time these errors are caused by something on their end that the user is unable to fix, even on the off chance that they understand the problem in the first place. So there isn’t any need to give you more information than “something went wrong, please wait a minute and/or try again”.
OK but then inherent in what you’re saying is also the message, “… and don’t contact us about this, because we don’t want to deal with it” which is also mildly infuriating to me.
Iit’s an internal error that is not handled properly. They don’t want to tell you the exact error message and detailed information around that, because it would expose the internal state of the backend and that would be a security issue. There is really nothing more that they can tell you, except that a developer needs to look at this (and possibly thousands to tens or hundreds of thousands of similar logged errors) and they probably already are.
Maybe then, the message could be, “An internal error has occurred and we’re going to work on fixing it but there’s nothing you can do to fix it yourself right now”. It’s the “Oops” that fries my grits.
If you’re tech-savvy enough to want detailed error messages, you should also be tech-savvy enough to understand the implied message you just typed out. The ‘Oops’ isn’t for you, it’s for the average user.
I do agree, the whole “oops sowwy” with a sad Labrador vibe is a little irritating. But I guess they do it cause it’s a harmless and layman-friendly response.
You’re assuming they aren’t already aware of the issue.
Sorry but how does that help me?
What I’m saying is that when you see one of these messages you should interpret it as “something is wrong on our end, nothing you can or need to do on your end, please hang tight as we’re aware of the issue and working on it”. They don’t give you more info than that because that average person is probably not a dev and doesn’t have any need for more details than that.
But it’s MY Internet, and I want it NOW!!
You’re giving an incredibly large allowance for companies that have continuously calculated exactly how much they can fuck over their customers for more money before we decide to use some other product.
How does telling someone about a problem they’re already aware of help you?
I give my users instructions on how to report an error if they seek assistance. It’s regularly ignored. Instead we get the ubiquitous “Something bad happened … somewhere. HALP!”
“I got an error”
“What did it say?”
“I don’t know, just something went wrong”
“👍”
Users ignore error messages.
I have seen my users request support, proceed to demonstrate the issue they’re having, and click through error messages so fast there isn’t even enough time for me to say “WAIT!” Forget about being able to actually read even one word of the message before it’s dismissed from the screen.
They treat the error messages like they are just an annoying mosquito to be swatted away as quickly as possible. This despite the fact that the whole reason I’m standing behind them is so I can see what it’s going wrong and, you know, read the error messages.
That’s Windows’ training bearing fruit.
Them:
“What? Oh that? That always happens”
Me:
Grrrrr
Yeah, you’re right, but I still would prefer to see something telling me whether something I did caused the problem or something went wrong in the software / on the server. From this thread, I’m getting that my wishes will not be heard.
Reminds me of the old “Oopsie woopsie we made a fucky wucky!!” post
Ringtone for when work calls/texts:
If it doesn’t tell you what error it is, isn’t an error message, it’s just a message that says that something went wrong. Even a calculator has proper error messages that show you actual information about what is wrong
This is the only error message I need
What I hate even more are error codes
Precise, easily searchable codes that describe the problem? What a ball ache!
This person gets it. Thank you.
Not on Windows, no. “This error code could indicate this or that or something”.
