[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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