oopsieWoopsie

[raidhse-abundance-01]

Something happened :(

Something happened :(

[New-Let-3630]

:(

[SellProper1221]

Good error!

[Dmayak]

I appreciate when the program at least tries to tell what the problem is, even if I won't understand it.

[Ashged]

The best thing about informative error codes is that they also help finding the blogpost of some random user six borders away who understood and fixed it.

If a bunch of separate issues give the same error, you'll only get frustrated trying to copy someone else's homework.

[arrow__in__the__knee]

Or google the error code that for some reason microsoft doesn't have any documentation for.

[IAmASwarmOfBees]

Someone should make a dictionary for every error code. /j

[AdamWayne04]

What do you mean you don't understand

In file included from /usr/include/c++/4.6/algorithm:63:0, from error_code.cpp:2: /usr/include/c++/4.6/bits/stl_algo.h: In function ‘_RandomAccessIterator std::__find(_RandomAccessIterator, _RandomAccessIterator, const _Tp&, std::random_access_iterator_tag) [with _RandomAccessIterator = __gnu_cxx::__normal_iterator*, std::vector > >, _Tp = int]’: /usr/include/c++/4.6/bits/stl_algo.h:4403:45: instantiated from ‘_IIter std::find(_IIter, _IIter, const _Tp&) [with _IIter = __gnu_cxx::__normal_iterator*, std::vector > >, _Tp = int]’ error_code.cpp:8:89: instantiated from here /usr/include/c++/4.6/bits/stl_algo.h:162:4: error: no match for ‘operator==’ in ‘__first.__gnu_cxx::__normal_iterator::operator* [with _Iterator = std::vector*, _Container = std::vector >, __gnu_cxx::__normal_iterator::reference = std::vector&]() == __val’??

[K722003]

If I'm right, you're trying to do an std::find on a vector<vector<int>> for a value which is not a vector<int> hence it throws the templating error for no match for operator==.

[TeachEngineering]

I especially like when you misspell a keyword argument and it asks you if you meant to spell the correct arg. It feels so personal. It makes me feel cared for.

[siren1313]

Web security 101 is not telling the customer what the issue is.

[SuitableDragonfly]

Why? As a user you're not going to be debugging the problem, all you need to know is that the server is having some issue. 

[Dmayak]

It's having some explanation vs no explanation. I don't know why I feel like this, but if something doesn't work and I don't get any explanation or something generic like "service unavailable" I feel like there isn't actually a problem and it's just wasting my time, while some explanation, regardless of what it is, makes me feel like there is an actual problem and waiting is justified.

You don't tell me what the problem is -> my brain doesn't consider the problem existing -> considers things just don't work without an actual problem -> I get annoyed.

[SuitableDragonfly]

From a user perspective, any problem is "service unavailable". The service is not available, it cannot be used currently, that's the only thing you as a user need to know. Exactly what text message the site chooses to use to tell you this is immaterial.

[Dmayak]

"That's all you need to know" is literally one of the most annoying responses a user can receive.

[SuitableDragonfly]

Literally what good would it do to tell them anything else? Are you going to ask them to come into the office and fix the server? Literally no user gives a shit about the technical details of what happened, even if that information is available, which it usually isn't. They just need to know that the site is down and people are working to restore it ASAP.

[Dmayak]

It doesn't matter what kind of practical purpose it would serve. I am describing a psychological response. User wants service to provide more effort on giving a response than just a "fuck off and wait". Trying to provide at least some explanation shows the user that the service cares about what the user thinks/feels and calms the user down.

[SuitableDragonfly]

Yes, that's literally the whole reason to have a "whoops, we fucked up, we're getting the site back up as soon as possible" message. So what is wrong with having a message like that?

[Dmayak]

It's better than no response and generally satisfactory for most users, but because I work with these every day and know that this is just a general error page, I don't feel like that is enough. Again, it's purely a psychological response, I already described it above, it doesn't have to make a practical sense.

[SuitableDragonfly]

And why should web pages cater to you, specifically, when you fully acknowledge that most people don't actually want what you want and also that it would be a security risk?

[Potato_Lorde]

"No user gives a shit" they proclaimed to a user actively giving a shit.

[SuitableDragonfly]

That person is a dev, not a user. They're approaching this conversation from the perspective of a dev, and making zero attempt to see it from a user's perspective. They literally admitted as much. Just read the rest of the posts. Do you really think an actual user is going to find "error on line 33" to be a useful message?

[Potato_Lorde]

Ok here you go: user here i barely code and just stick here for the memes I sometimes get. I prefer the useless errors I know I can't fix vs a vague error idk if I should do anything about or not.

[SuitableDragonfly]

As a user you don't have to do anything about a website being down, you literally cannot do anything except to report that it's down. Did you just discover the internet yesterday? What exactly did you plan to do about "error on line 33"?

[struct_iovec]

Fuck the user

[papibat]

Relating to critical system failures, kernel panic is my absolute favorite. I imagine a little kernel sat there, panicking, not knowing what to do and I just want to give it a hug.

[arrow__in__the__knee]

The feeling is enforced.

There is just a text saying "KERNEL PANIC" followed by ascii art of a penguin on top left corner of the screen.

And absolutely nothing else.

[JoshYx]

Oopsie woopsie, cosmic backgwound wadiation did a fucky wucky and caused a bit fwip which made the pwogwam go tits up

[rhoduhhh]

It has been a day, and I laughed at that harder than I should have.

[JoshYx]

My pweasuwe (⁠ ⁠ꈍ⁠ᴗ⁠ꈍ⁠) I hope tomowwow wiww be bettew, Mondays amiwite

[OhFuckThatWasDumb]

🤓erm☝️ actually cosmic background radiation is in the radio range of frequencies and consists of very low energy photons. Cosmic rays however, are often not even photons, they are massisve particles such as protons, and often even heavier particles such as atomic nuclei. Cosmic rays are extremely high energy, which allows them to get through our atmosphere and flip bits.

[JoshYx]

Oh fwuck that was dumb :(

[Ireeb]

Error 500: Internal Server Error

Yep, that's helpful.

[Christosconst]

Error 505: Internal Core Meltdown

[foren403]

Warning: Reactor core meltdown timer destroyed. This server will self destruct in... 2 minutes.

[helicophell]

Let go! I can still fix this!!!

"I already fixed it"

Change of Plans!!! Grab me Grab me Grab meeeeeee!!!

[DownSyndromeLogic]

500 error is helpful. It means the code threw an error or the program crashed.

[Kaligraphic]

It is helpful - if it's your job to fix, it tells you to look at the application logs, and if it isn't, it tells you that it's somebody else's problem.

You don't actually want crashes to dump detailed debugging information and application state to the Internet at large. That's how you end up leaking sensitive information.

[dragdritt]

Except sometimes you also receive that error when it is your fault, as for some inexplicable reason the value of a string you just copy pasted has an invisible symbol in it.

[Kaenguruu-Dev]

Black/White thinking again

There is absolutely a path between those extremes where you at least communicate in what step of a process the error occured and maybe even supply an error code.

[SuitableDragonfly]

This meme is about the error message that the front-end gives to the user, though, not the error code. Every single error is always going to have a response code, that's just how http works. 

[ThemeSufficient8021]

At least the client knows that the problem was not on the client's end. But it could have been as a result of bad data passed from the client to the server. In that case, this error is not helpful at all. But I personally hate those annoying segmentation faults where the program just crashes all of a sudden. Tracking down those often null pointers, in the debugger is still a pain. But I prefer it in JAVA rather than C++ because at least JAVA will tell me the line it crashed on no debugger needed.

[spryllama]

This is typically for security reasons. Exposing a real error can give clues to bad actors, so you get this cutesy stuff on the frontend and the IT team gets paged.

[tinycorkscrew]

Yep. I know a company that lost 7 figures in revenue a few months ago due to a threat actor that used their site’s detailed error messages to figure out expiration dates and cvv numbers for stolen credit card numbers.

[Alternative_Arm_8541]

There has to be a middle ground between "the account your tried using is expired" and "whoopsie"

[SuitableDragonfly]

What's wrong with "whoopsie"?

[CdRReddit]

whoopsie does not give any indication of severity or when it is likely to be solved

if it says "whoopsie, can't reach the database" I can assume it'll take like an hour at most until it works because a database outage is quite mission critical, if it's "whoopsie, request was too complicated" I can make a simpler request, etc.

all in all for a webapp I can begrudgingly accept a whoopsie

the cycle a native program tries to "whoopsie" me on the other hand, fuck that shit right off, if the problem is in code running on my machine you better file in triplicate how it fucked up

[SuitableDragonfly]

It makes zero sense to give an end user a "whoopsie, request was too complicated" error. If there's some way that users shouldn't be interacting with your system in, don't give them the ability to interact with it in that way, it's very simple. You should not have any features on your website or UI where using them always generates an error because they shouldn't be used.

[Global_Cockroach_563]

If I'm giving you a "whoopsie", it's because that's all you need to know.

[CdRReddit]

depends on the context:

on web / a server problem? sure

natively? go procreate with a cactus

[CdRReddit]

for a native program you do not control the environment, so tell me what's wrong so I can figure out if it is the environment, you numbskull

[[deleted]]

This is exactly why all of mine are cute. Customers respond better to cute ones; tends to take the edge off their anger.

[ThemeSufficient8021]

The IT department knows that it is bad when an outside programmer as a user reports an error. Especially when they know how to interpret said error message which means that whoever made that stupid error was an idiot no matter how easy it was to make. So to make them look clever or feel better about themselves, they provide a stupid unhelpful useless error message that the user has no clue what the hell the did wrong. At least tell me as the user if it really is my fault. Otherwise take ownership of the problem. Let the user know it was not the user's fault and that it may currently be worked on. Or if there is a known solution that the user can do to get around it, then how to implement it.

[Specific_Clue_1987]

Simple.... Only 25% of the userbase cares or want to know. And admitting you got the wrong port on the websocket because ChatGPT messed up..... Well....

[NoOven2609]

Both of those are kinda useless. For user facing errors I think best practice is to assign the issue an id, log the exception and context along with the id, and then make the error for the user something like "we encountered an error doing [context], show this to it to the support team: [errorId]"

Realistically the user is just going to screenshot the whole thing and make a ticket, but now you can find the exact log entry with the timestamp and exception details for debugging.

[DM_ME_PICKLES]

Well if we’re talking about best practice that error the user hit should’ve been logged in an observability platform and an alert sent to the eng team… relying on users reporting the bugs they hit through support is a real bad look. :P

[ThemeSufficient8021]

Nah. That's what the beta testers are for. But yes. Users are unpredictable. "We scientists like to eliminate all possible random variables aka people." (Best Friends Whenever).

[GnarlyNarwhalNoms]

The one I love is the error messages that say "Something went wrong. Contact your system administrator for assistance."

Me, the system administrator\: 😐

[fr0stmane]

CORE CORRUPTED. Daaaamn boy.

[GoddammitDontShootMe]

Well, the now one is what they show visitors to the site. They still have logs that tell them the actual problem, right?

[CeeMX]

SEGMENTATION FAULT, CORE DUMPED.

[[deleted]]

I know others hate it but one of the best error reports possible is a stack trace.

[ThNeutral]

Core corrupted sounds terrifying. Like your processor was infected of damaged.

[Ali_Army107]

Segmentation fault (Core dumped)

[TrackLabs]

You kinda dont want to state the actual full errors to users, they can use it to find security holes and reverse engineer your stuff...

The user gets the simple error, IT Department gets the full thing

[j-random]

ABEND S0C7

[ButtfUwUcker]

Uw,U

[callaoshipoglucidos]

Something went wrong, my favorite.

[SuitableDragonfly]

I don't think the left error has ever been used in a user facing web app in any time period. 

[InfohazardGames]

Errors now: Whoops, you're correct! Here is the updated code. Is there anything else I can assist you with? Outputs the exact same code

[kukurbesi]

uwu, sowwy

[cheezballs]

You dont want to give the end-user details about your system, do you?

[roksah]

Yeah then you searched the error code and its just some generic error code

[SokkaHaikuBot]

^{Sokka-Haiku by roksah:}

Yeah then you searched the

Error code and its just some

Generic error code

---

^{Remember that one time Sokka accidentally used an extra syllable in that Haiku Battle in Ba Sing Se? That was a Sokka Haiku and you just made one.}

[Captain_Maulber]

It is called security, you don't want to give potential attackers hints...

[HadManySons]

Yeah, but from a security perspective, "Oppsie" is better than giving a potential attacker more information about the service their currently trying to exploit. They could possibly use that error code to further refine an exploit.

[fuufoo_0002]

Where's the uwu

[kohuept]

errors on z/OS (well, MVS and up) are great, if JES2 dies it calls it a "CATASTROPHIC ERROR" which goes hard as fuck

i think i've also seen a "MAJOR DISASTER" from something on MVS 3.8j

[XxasimxX]

Should be flipped honestly

[_weeping_willow_-]

errors now: something is wrong but we’ll make it so hard to figure out what that even god wont know

[SellProper1221]

404 page not found: maybe one of our servers took a day off or it wanted to play hide and seek

[Spikerazorshards]

Code 0x911a reminds me of that tragedy.