[sldev] Re: [VWR] Web login without llmozlib

Argent Stonecutter secret.argent at gmail.com
Thu Dec 27 07:08:00 PST 2007


On 2007-12-27, at 07:21, Alissa Sabre wrote:
>>> The message after the error code is not for users; it is for
>>> developers and experienced administrators.
>>

>> The message after the status code is routinely delivered to end-
>> users,
>

> That's true.  But, all those programs are wrong, IMHO.

They're wrong for following the RFC?

What else is (for example) a program that contains no HTTP or XML  
parsing code supposed to do? Software that has a valid error message  
*even not internationalized* and refuses to let the end-user see it  
is far more in error than software that provides the best information  
that it has.

This is one of the biggest problems with modern GUI software. When  
something goes wrong down in the innards of the code, and the user  
needs to know about it, the information they need to know what to do  
about the problem is thrown away. Then, later, a dialog box pops up  
and the user gets a message about what the programmer thought was  
most likely the cause.

I've had software tell me that there was a network problem when the  
real problem was that the user didn't have permission to do what they  
were trying to do. I've had software tell me that there was a  
permissions problem when a disk was full. I have had software tell me  
that I was out of disk space whenever an attempt to save a file  
failed, even if it was a network error or a permissions problem. I've  
had software tell me that I needed to restart my computer when the  
problem was a missing configuration file (so of course that didn't  
help).

The result of trying to protect the user is that the modern computer  
is all too often like a sick pet. You can see it's unhappy, but it  
can't tell you that it hurts, or it's bored, or it's mad at you  
because you moved the water dish. It's like a car where the idiot  
lights are all miswired, so when you're low on gas it turns on the  
"upshift" light, and when the radiator overheats it plays a  
recording... "Your door is open" in any one of 20 melodious voices.

And while Second Life is probably the least guilty out of any game  
software I've ever seen, it does already do a lot of this.

I understand why it happens. People want to believe that software is  
inherently well behaved and reliable. They set up programming  
guidelines that encourage programmers to attempt to hide errors,  
because the people who write the guidelines think end-users are  
better off if they don't see them.

Then something goes wrong that wasn't anticipated and the end user  
ends up convinced that the programmers are insane. Or that computers  
are somehow inherently impossible for them to understand.



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