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Comment by reaperducer | Hacker News Reader

I don't get shock from "Gah." I get embarrassment and disappointment, which seems appropriate for the situation. Firefox is ashamed that it screwed up.

Then again, I'm from the age when the internet was still fun, and everything didn't have to be corporate, uniform, serious, and boring.

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I'm from that age too, but it groomed me to cringe when a $XXM international corporate brand tries to be casual and fun. It doesn't feel authentic. It doesn't feel like it speaks from some relaxed, hacker culture at Mozilla. It feels like somebody in a designer hoodie with an ocean view conference room wants to brand Firefox as the fun alternative. It only makes me miss those old days more.

My memory of the 'old days' was that instead of a tab crash, the whole browser would crash, and instead of a helpful error, you'd be forced to terminate the process and get some generic Windows error feedback prompt. I suppose that was real hacker culture?

Either way, I don't mind cutesy messages so long as they contain at least a code which can be traced back to wherever an exception was thrown or whatever. The main problem is generic error messages which are a problem whether they're cutesy or not ('an error has occurred').

Not at all - real hackers were not using windows obviously!

Guru Meditation 0000010x48454c50

Cutesy messages imply that software can be no better.

Oops, as a bunch of well-payed professionals we messed up but look at the thought that went into the copy that covers our butts...?

When software fails we failed. Stop with the lipstick on our collective incompetence.

"It feels like somebody in a designer hoodie with an ocean view conference room wants to brand Firefox as the fun alternative."

Ah, you've seen the view from their SF offices.[1]

[1] https://earth.google.com/web/search/@37.78972221,-122.388833...

The only time I've seen a cute error added it was an engineer who just wanted to add some playfulness to the product.

I get fatuous inauthenticity. It's a computer program not a person, and no single person wrote it or actually feels any aggrieved embarassement for that mishap, since they aren't manually performing the task that went wrong. They may say "gah" sincerely sometime later when they read a bug report, but that is some entirely seperate thing.

This, right here. Exactly this.

Yes. British railway stations have a computerised voice apologising for the delayed trains. If it was a human making these announcements I could imagine them feeling a smidgen of regret. But with a computer I know nobody gives a shit.

"Gah," doesn't reflect shame to me, but mild annoyance. Firefox is annoyed that there was a screw up. It doesn't even use "I" language.

None of that matters, though. We're looking at this like developers do: From a distance while not being personally affected by it in the moment.

The article discusses this point:

> What seems fun and light-hearted in your office may read very differently when you’ve just ruined somebody’s day.

They use examples of transport, telephony, and finance; all three of which may involve the browser.

The author also acknowledges it's okay to be fun:

> There’s a place for humour and levity in software, and my code has plenty – but error messages are rarely it.

All the fun will be sucked out of software development one mildly offended HNer at a time.

Doing things that are kind of funny for the developers, and then ordinary users have wildly varying opinions of... isn't so great.

You could make that argument about any copy. If you pick something neutral tone someone will say it's sterile and uncaring. If you pick something technical someone will say it's pointless and confusing. If you pick something firm someone will say its angry or condescending.

Yes, but I like the reference to Scalzi someone else made in this thread: the failure state of clever is "asshole."

Sterile, professional, and uncaring is a heck of a lot better than a chunk of the user population thinking "it's worse than them not caring-- they're actively mocking our complaints/problems!"

"Mildly offended HNer" briefly registered visually as "one mildly offended Hitler at a time".

I'm not sure which form I actually like better. The mental image accompanying the misparse amuses me.

We should never take HNers too seriously lest we suck all the fun from everything in life.

There is always plenty of fun to be had in software. It should never be had at the expense of users.

I don't inherently mind fun, but error messages being fun/cutesy is not the time.

I think you're highlighting the issue on why this is a bad choice. Words like "gah" mean different things to different people. They may not even mean anything at all to non native English speakers.

If they are aiming to use their browser in English I don’t think that’s bad? Firefox is translated into many languages, so if someone uses the English version it’s likely deliberate.

Gah is bad because (1) it is not precise, (2) it has inconsistent connotation.

It's bad because it's Clippy.

English as a second language speaker here. I've used all programs in English for a very long time because 1) the translations universally suck 2) the non-English terms are more cumbersome, confusing, and harder to look up.

Although I do miss the fun and playful nature of the old internet, before corporations moved in, I would still ask you to consider the following:

You dial a wrong number. Which do you prefer to hear

This, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aTNthUcvyEM

Or this, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qzr-V-ttZ8

If you're just trying to call a friend, and you put in a wrong digit, the fun response might be a brief chance to have a good laugh at yourself, but, if you are doing something like say trying to call a doctor to ask for lab results on a cancer screening, or you're trying to call the bank to report a stolen credit card, and you get the wacky "Whoops! Looks like you you need to get a dialing wand! lol"[1] response, it is not going to be well received.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that a joke message can have a certain place, but I think that it means the developer has to take some time to consider "Is this ever going to be used for something serious or time sensitive?" If it's just a small project, who cares? But if it's going to be used by more than a friend group, or a niche circle of 100-500 users, it's probably better off left in as a joke comment, instead of a user-facing error message.

[1] https://youtu.be/npSVS9CJyPc?t=20

I don't need "corporate, uniform, serious, and boring."

I generally just want things to be genuine. With error messages, that should be no-nonsense - when software crashes, I'm not interested in how verbally clever the vendor can be.

Remember your cutsey expression of your individuality might be cute the first time your software crashes, but after the 100th crash, doesn't come across quite the same way.

You were 12 using the hard work of a generation of engineers to surf geocities without knowing it.

>When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things

The current generation of engineers didn't get the memo.

You were 12 using the hard work of a generation of engineers to surt geocities without knowing it.

You make poor assumptions. I was banging out code for a chemical company on a green screen Wyse terminal and sending e-mail with bang paths.

That you think the internet should be whimsical and fun explains the state of security on SCADA devices.

Damn. Why so harsh?

Does the Internet need to be regulated like industrial control devices? Should we get permission from AT&T to certify what we can connect to the network?

The Internet is a tool for everyone, not just gray-beard, elitist gate-keepers. There is room to experiment, make mistakes, and even harmless fun.

Keep in mind Firefox is the least corporate of all major browsers--recent CEO shenanigans not withstanding.

EDIT: > You were 12 using the hard work of a generation of engineers to surf geocities without knowing it.

Um, so? Thousands of generations of inventors toiled away for you to even touch a computing device (fire, argiculture, rule of law, professional armies, enlightenment, vacuum tubes etc.)

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