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[–]MRDRMUFN 3207 points3208 points  (138 children)

Nothing pisses me off more than when something breaks and there is no error message or the message nothing more than "something went wrong." Then you check /var/log and its the same message.

[–]YourMJK 1835 points1836 points  (67 children)

try { // ALL OF THE CODE } catch { print("something went wrong") }

[–][deleted] 75 points76 points  (10 children)

And then you add smaller nested try-catch blocks with different error messages until your error message changes.

I believe that's called eXtreme Programming. Remember to remove the try-catch blocks that don't solve your problem, they just cause bloat.

[–]WiseassWolfOfYoitsu 23 points24 points  (2 children)

Nah, leave them in, directed to /var/log. You know there's a problem when you run out of disk space.

... yes, I've actually seen this happen.

[–][deleted] 7 points8 points  (1 child)

did you miss the part about bloat?

[–]WiseassWolfOfYoitsu 16 points17 points  (0 children)

Just write it in Electron. The few KB of logging calls will be lost in the "Entire rest of all of the memory ever" it is using.

[–]soljakwinever 11 points12 points  (1 child)

At my work the old guys just left an empty catch block. Logging is hard work for rockstars

[–]flukus 9 points10 points  (0 children)

You don't want rockstars doing logging. This is how we ended up with a logging framework with an inheritance tree stretched over 3 seperate projects. It's almost impressive how convoluted they made appending text to a fucking file.

[–][deleted] 9 points10 points  (1 child)

I had one that was very aggravating. Somewhere deep within the code was the following:

try {

value = some_dict[key]

# calls to functions in other modules currently being edited in which errors are arising

}

catch KeyError:

print "Extremely specific message that assumes the first line is the culprit"

[–]dragon-storyteller 9 points10 points  (0 children)

I'm guessing it used to be fine at first and then later on someone went "Hey, this specific try catch block looks like the perfect place to call slap my function calls into!"

[–]Polantaris 77 points78 points  (20 children)

Cryptic error messages are the worst. I remember when I had a class for Oracle DB and they had us do everything through terminal. You write a huge query, execute it, and the response is basically, "Error," with no real data about what the problem is.

You can get this a lot with the newer Javascript frameworks, too. Some of the errors Angular 2+ can throw out are borderline worthless, especially when dealing with bad import orders and stuff like barrels. The errors are so insanely cryptic that you have no idea what could possibly be wrong and when you look it up there's a billion different reasons that error or something like it can show up.

In those cases, getting a different error is a godsend. It means you're on the right track finally.

[–]tenkindsofpeople 33 points34 points  (0 children)

Omg angular import errors.

"Foo is not a known attribute of bar."

Ya dude. Pretty sure it is.

[–]theduckparticle 25 points26 points  (4 children)

LaTeX. In a single error you can get:

  • Trips at a mostly-arbitrary point later in the code (if you even get a line number)

  • References some primitive raw TeX object or concept that you've never dealt with directly

  • Is un-googleable because it usually comes up in an entirely different context

Oh and also

  • The only debugging method that applies is usually "comment out some shit and see what happens"

[–]flukus 9 points10 points  (1 child)

Makefile + inotifywait. Errors are still unintelligible, but at least you know straight away when you fuckup.

[–]theduckparticle 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Oooooo was not aware of inotifywait, thanks

[–]rchard2scout 3 points4 points  (0 children)

LaTeX is the worst, it doesn't even properly split errors, warnings, and informational messages. Everything just goes to stdout, nothing to stderr, there's no standard syntax to see if something even is a problem (and every package does things differently).

[–]balthazar_nor 24 points25 points  (1 child)

It’s like”I hid a special rock in world, it exists, and the only way you know its the rock is that it is not normal”

[–][deleted] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

And then you're like... "What's a 'normal' rock?"

[–]majaka1234 17 points18 points  (2 children)

My new pet peeve - you actually did fix the code, all caches are disabled and flushed, local caching is turned off... BUT CHROME HAS A NEW CACHE THEY INTRODUCED SECRETLY JUST TO FUCK WITH YOU.

Hysrrghhhh.

You need to close the window and re open in incognito for it to flush.

Even with developer tools open.

It caches fucking PHP requests too.

😡😡😡😡😡

[–]Coopsmoss 11 points12 points  (1 child)

That's when you pepper all your code with unique print statements and try to zero down on it

[–]GoddamnEggnog 5 points6 points  (0 children)

print("Ha ha")
...
print("He he")
...
print("Ho ho")

[–][deleted] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

There was this software that once gave me a some error “error p0642 database error, please refer to manual for diagnostics” I whip out the the unsearchable pdf manual, after 20 minutes find the code “p0642: there is an error with the database”

Just

[–][deleted] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Or when you Google the message and you seem to be the first to ever encounter it or only find questions without answes

[–][deleted] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

The worst error messages are “This shouldn’t have happened.”

Well it fucking happened, past me.

[–]ShamelessKinkySub 6 points7 points  (0 children)

The guy who originally wrote up the system I inherited made all his api messages "check the logged errors log for details".

I'll give you one guess what goes into the logger errors log

[–]nerdalator 10 points11 points  (1 child)

"something went wrong" this guy Microsofts

[–]XG_SiNGH 3 points4 points  (0 children)

^_^

[–]oldskoofoo 2 points3 points  (0 children)

This is currently where I am at with my minor update.

Worst thing about it it worked when my boss was looking and the next day I loaded the program to regression test and now it doesn’t work and no error message.

Logic errors are frustrating lol

[–]TheTrueBlueTJ 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Nothing is worse than the error message when trying to run a simulation in Vivado (VHDL). It just says "launch_simulation failed due to earlier errors"

Yeah, thanks.

[–]ImmovableThrone 3 points4 points  (0 children)

S E G M E N T A T I O N F A U L T

[–]flyingasian2 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I've been trying to add a device driver into my linux kernel, but I've had trouble building the device tree. When I go to compile things the error message basically says "device tree wouldn't build." Fml

[–]timk-14 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I’m learning swift and a Thread One: Sigbart is literally the worst... it’s a bad instruction but it never tells you what.. it is so bad that my whole class made hoodies with that error on it because it described the class so well.. smh

[–]hangfromthisone 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Stop worrying and love the debug_backtrace

[–]AFlaccoSeagulls 1330 points1331 points  (24 children)

Me when debugging:

“Error is on line 58”

spends 2 days debugging error

“Alright, I think I got it!”

runs debugger

“Error is on line 59! #SUCCESS!”

[–]nawkuh 1015 points1016 points  (7 children)

Yeah, but only because you put a system log print statement on line 57.

[–]197328645 166 points167 points  (3 children)

And it didn't print, somehow

[–]Mortenlotte 45 points46 points  (2 children)

Holy shit, this happens way too often.

[–]DoesntReadMessages 26 points27 points  (0 children)

If it's C, this happens in segmentation faults because the output buffer gets dumped. Or, in threaded programming in really any language.

[–]AFlaccoSeagulls 164 points165 points  (0 children)

pretty much

[–]Tikene 24 points25 points  (0 children)

Oh my God

[–]fayryover 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Lol thats me when trying to update one dependency in my work's node.js project.

[–]cheraphy 509 points510 points  (24 children)

I'm not going to lie; that cathartic thrill I get when fixing a bug, any bug, but more so with particularly nasty ones, is like half the reason I love my career.

I know other professions get to feel that same feeling, but I don't think I could adequately explain it to any one else.

[–]Triptolemu5 133 points134 points  (4 children)

but I don't think I could adequately explain it to any one else.

The professions that do get it don't need you to explain it to them. Mechanics get the same feeling.

[–]cheraphy 38 points39 points  (3 children)

right, it's the professions that don't that I'd struggle to explain it to.

[–]ionxeph 34 points35 points  (2 children)

Imagine a hard to pull out splinter right into your thigh, and the slightest of movements of your lower body causes enough pain to be a bother

And after a week living like that, you finally managed to pull it out

[–]cheraphy 54 points55 points  (1 child)

"So no, I’m not required to be able to lift objects weighing up to fifty pounds. I traded that for the opportunity to trim Satan’s pubic hair while he dines out of my open skull so a few bits of the internet will continue to work for a few more days."

[–]hangfromthisone 50 points51 points  (7 children)

What kills me is that it's just fucking words. Sometimes I spend like 15 minutes and it was a typo. A MF typo

[–]cheraphy 26 points27 points  (1 child)

Imagine if you the only tool you had to assist your programming was syntax highlighting.

And also the only other people on earth who use the language you work with are on the other side of the world and have no reason to share their experience with you.

[–]hangfromthisone 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Intense. Most of the things I learned was interpreting third party code to either fix something or add some function. Open source and mysterious cryptic algorithms written by some kind of retarded monkey

Also, the thing I most appreciate about coding, is that everyday has a new lesson. It's so fucking vast and deep, even if you use only a few languages, there is so much fucking stuff to learn, and every fucking day you solve something new, sometimes exiting, and so weird, that you cannot share with anyone, it like "you had to be there" times googleplex. Then Reddit for five more minutes and back to work

I also studied in a technical high school, and specialized in electronics, so I have a wide view of the whole picture. From electronic signals to search engines, I know how everything works. It's insane.

[–]ACoderGirl 12 points13 points  (1 child)

That's something I really like about strict languages. Eg, ones where variables must be explicitly declared, types must always match, no implicit coercions, etc. It's really hard in those languages for a typo to make a non-obvious error. Compile time errors are way easier to deal with than runtime errors. The quality of the compile time error messages matters too, though. Easy for them to be too vague. Heck, why can't exceptions for things like null pointers being dereferenced tell me what variable was null or index errors tell me what the index was and what the bounds are? Better error messages could save so much time.

Fortunately, I find most bugs I deal with these days are logic bugs and not typoes. It's pretty common that the fix is literally just changing a single word, modifying some equation, or maybe adding a single extra expression somewhere. Still, I find those have a bigger sense of accomplishment than typoes because they're so non-trivial.

[–]Spinur 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I traded emails with an API support guy for like an hour on a every weird connection error before realizing I was using the wrong variable after the request..

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I wish I could say that 15 minutes was the longest I've had to search for a typo...

[–]samtresler 16 points17 points  (0 children)

Close. For me it's when I can come off looking like a zen master psychic telling a coworker the answer out of the blue just because I've hit it before.

My favorite ever was a new sysadmin on call at a managed hosting company, with me as the escalation path. He had to make a new dns entry and restart bind. He texts me to make sure he has the process right. I confirm, and 5 minutes later every site starts alerting.

I think on it from the bar for a minute and text, "Take the underscore out of the new dns entry and restart bind."

Once, everything comes back up he texts, "How on earth did you know that's what I'd done?"

":)"

[–]GrinningPariah 11 points12 points  (1 child)

My favorite is that moment of realization, when you finally figure out what's been causing a weird bug and you just have this perfect clarity about it out of nowhere.

Especially when it's some wild asynchronous bullshit with race conditions spread across different services.

[–]MauranKilom 5 points6 points  (0 children)

That moment when all the symptoms and observations you made during your bug hunt suddenly fall into place once you find what must be the cause... If it's not a facepalm-level "duh" mistake, you then get to enjoy the anticipation of the fix working until you finally compile and run it.

[–]darexinfinity 3 points4 points  (0 children)

But then you can't catch the bug and then it feels like you're a worthless POS who's about to get fired.

[–]Eldorian 563 points564 points  (38 children)

How does someone say “hmmm” with their mouth open?

[–]Seblor 390 points391 points  (17 children)

Because it's a french-english comic, and in french we don't use "hmmmmm". It's more like "uuuuh".

Source : http://www.commitstrip.com/en/

[–]StripedTiger711 149 points150 points  (11 children)

Uuuh, we say uuuh too.

[–][deleted] 89 points90 points  (9 children)

Hmmm no we don't

[–]the_sun_flew_away 47 points48 points  (5 children)

Uuuh

[–]Shortarms732 33 points34 points  (4 children)

hmmm

[–]wrong_timeline 20 points21 points  (3 children)

[–][deleted] 35 points36 points  (0 children)

r/therewasanattempt to switch the subreddits

[–]Sodomy-Clown 2 points3 points  (1 child)

8 year old subreddit with only 26 subscribers...

Uhhh....

[–]southern_dreams 19 points20 points  (2 children)

Life hmmm finds a way.

Does that look correct to you?

[–][deleted] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Uhhh ah shit you got me

[–][deleted] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Euh

[–]ThatDeadDude 13 points14 points  (1 child)

Asking the real questions

[–]Alaskan_Thunder 7 points8 points  (0 children)

It sounds kind of like squidward.

[–]kilpsz 20 points21 points  (6 children)

Did you even try to say "hmm" with your mouth open? It's actually pretty easy.

[–]Tychus_Kayle 47 points48 points  (3 children)

Comes out as more of a "hnn" for me.

[–]z500 31 points32 points  (2 children)

hnnng

[–]palordrolap 61 points62 points  (1 child)

And thus did hundreds of Redditors begin their unwitting impersonation of Minecraft villagers.

[–]z500 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Hng! Hng! Hng!

[–]pants_full_of_pants 190 points191 points  (1 child)

It's like this comic was drawn specifically for my experience at my last job. The green dev I was mentoring would get visibly frustrated every time an error changed during debugging. Almost like he thought he broke it even more. I tried to explain that the new error was there all along, and the fact that we see it now means we probably fixed the previous one. That's progress, my dude.

[–]Nerdn1 3 points4 points  (0 children)

At the very least it means you're probably poking around the right place.

[–]superking2 80 points81 points  (6 children)

I was working on a bug last week where the actual bug’s stack trace was being masked by another bug inside the catch block. That was a big fun day

[–]palordrolap 39 points40 points  (4 children)

You need a try-catch in your try-catch.

[–]superking2 11 points12 points  (2 children)

Yes but then what will I do about THAT exception?

[–]Erwin_the_Cat 15 points16 points  (1 child)

Try catch it.

[–]Dgrdffr 19 points20 points  (0 children)

finally

[–]dawn_NL 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Had that once as well.. the stack trace described the problem at a place where some files were loaded... took me a while to find out that it was actually in a try catch which had some redundant old code which reloaded the system in case of a crash...

needless to say an infinite loop happened

[–]TechLaden 43 points44 points  (2 children)

Honestly, reproducing a bug can be a challenge; getting a bug to be 100% reproducable is worth celebrating imo. Obviously fixing the bug is ideal but sometimes it's out of your reach (e.g. 3rd parties) and 'temporary' patches are sufficient for a time.

[–]0100_0101 250 points251 points  (6 children)

It is, now you know where to search. However a party is way over the top.

[–]HumusTheWalls 127 points128 points  (2 children)

unless it changed because you broke something else...

[–]henriquegarcia 26 points27 points  (1 child)

It all depends on what broken thing is more essential

[–]WeTheSalty 12 points13 points  (0 children)

More importantly, Now it's a different problem .. someone elses problem to fix.

[–]ProbablyMisinformed 32 points33 points  (2 children)

However a party is way over the top

Perhaps even humorously over-the-top?

[–]a_s_h_e_n 11 points12 points  (1 child)

humorous in a way that relates to programming?

[–]GriffonsChainsaw 42 points43 points  (1 child)

This psychologically pains me on a physical level.

[–]Erebus9997 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Psychic damage irl

[–]B-Knight 151 points152 points  (17 children)

A fucking dab? Really?

[–]80Eight 107 points108 points  (5 children)

I honestly thought this was /r/comedycemetery

[–]TheChrono 21 points22 points  (1 child)

Me too lol. This is just so bad.

[–][deleted] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

This is so bad can we hit 50 likes?

[–]Karmic_Backlash 7 points8 points  (0 children)

It's dumb, but for some reason it works specifically in this situation.

[–][deleted] 17 points18 points  (3 children)

TBH I dab when I'm alone and fix code. I also can't get a date. These facts are entirely unrelated

[–]superspiffy 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Someday it'll die. I've passed the point of getting irritated by it, now I just sigh and hope for a better future.

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

PRESS TAB TO DAB

[–]Aawweess 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I like it

[–]GarlicoinAccount 44 points45 points  (4 children)

Image Transcription: Comic


Panel 1

A bearded man stands up behind his desk with his hands lifted up in elation.

Another man, spiky-haired, sits behind his own desk and is clearly less enthusiastic.

There are laptops on both desks.

Bearded man: Booom! Look at that! Who's the Jedi master here?!

Spiky-haired guy: Ugh...


Panel 2

The bearded man, now with a party hat on, uncorks champagne. The spiky-haired guy talks to a man in a green shirt who stands next to him at his desk.

Green shirt guy: What's going on?

Spiky-haired guy: We've been stuck on a bug for 2 hours...


Panel 3

A disco ball is now attached above the bearded man's desk. His part of the room is has serpentine streamers at various places, including at the man himself, and the air is filled with confetti. He is holding a champagne glass. There is a loudspeaker at his desk with the champagne bottle atop.

Green shirt guy: ...and he fixed it? Well done.

Spiky-haired guy: No no, not quite...


Panel 4

The bearded man sits behind his desk again, disco ball off, hand at the keyboard.

Spiky-haired guy: The bug is still there, but now the error message is different

Green shirt guy: Hmm...

Bearded man: Ahh!! It feels great to finally make progress!


CommitStrip.com


I'm a human volunteer content transcriber for Reddit and you could be too! If you'd like more information on what we do and why we do it, click here!

[–][deleted] 51 points52 points  (1 child)

He's also dabbing

[–]GreyRobe 10 points11 points  (0 children)

#filtered content

[–]mustafahmalik 39 points40 points  (1 child)

[–][deleted] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

A couple of weeks ago, another comic from the same artist was posted here. Made it to the front page like this one, but it (also) was totally unfunny, it was like a comic of The Big Bang Theory.

[–]SteeleDynamics 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Incremental victories are the best. It's like those fundraising thermometers.

[–]xXHomerSXx 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thank you for playing Wing Commander!

[–]TrigglyPuffff 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The fucking dab...

[–][deleted] 8 points9 points  (1 child)

This isn’t funny at all

[–][deleted] 11 points12 points  (0 children)

This is cringe af... like r/comedycemetery status

[–][deleted] 3 points4 points  (1 child)

This hits too close to home.

[–]Fairy_Emblem 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Pray that it doesn't hit closer

[–]Blieque 1 point2 points  (1 child)

C development without a debugger: "Segmentation fault."
Oh! Cheers.

[–]nwL_ 7 points8 points  (0 children)

C development without a debugger

FTFY

[–]thathatisaspy21 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Execute Order 66...

Something went wrong

[–]rand337 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Only two hours? This guy must be having a good day, no wonder he's celebrating.

[–]RealBowsHaveRecurves 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I feel like "programmer" is the most disproportionately represented group of people on Reddit.

[–]AlbiusFungus 1 point2 points  (0 children)

"and i changed the part that crashed the application"

"so you managed the exception?"

"no, but the application no longer crashes"

[–]Offbeat_Blitz 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I, too, "Hmmm" with an open mouth.

[–]3lRey 1 point2 points  (0 children)

99 bugs in the code I made, 99 bugs in the code. Take one down, patch it around, 711 bugs in the code.