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Comment by grishka | Hacker News Reader

Error codes are specific and can be looked up. The modern trend of "uwu we fucky-wucked up" cutesy error messages with no details whatsoever is inexcusable because of how much harder it makes to troubleshoot the error.

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I like how bungie handles it. Known errors have codewords and if you see one it means they already know and documentation exists. It's also easier to connect with other players / support with your specific issue because general networking error ALFALFA will come up in different contexts than general networking error LENTIL.

I hate getting a 0x code from Windows because the search results are going to be completely useless, possibly not even for the program that I am trying to troubleshoot.

If error codes can be looked up, why can't the software displaying the error code just do the lookup and show a proper error message?

The forums usually take a while and a while and a lot of back and forth to arrive at a solution that works for maybe 80% of people under most circumstances, but is usually more of a workaround than a proper fix. (And there isn't necessarily just one cause of the error code, or one solution. The console doesn't know which is which without situational judgment)

The error codes are sort of a self service mechanism for advanced users who want to try unofficial troubleshooting. They're not a substitute for a real patch fixing the root issue.

I suspect this gets pushback internally because the descriptive error message baked into the OS is often wrong or misleading. Having a code you can look up can provide a lot more context.

Sometimes it can - the only time I've had this work, I had a bluescreen, on next startup Windows told me it was because I needed a driver update.

I think there's some path where driver devs can publish updates and link them to BSOD stacks which lets Windows tell users if they hit a bug that is fixed by a driver.

This was like 10+ years ago and I've never hit the same flow again, despite encountering bluescreens every once in awhile, which I guess goes to show how difficult this problem is.

You are assuming that this is not the first instance of this error code showing, this is the only error affecting the device, the device has internet access.

That is actually acknowledging responsibility.

Much more often I see : Oops, something went wrong

Who cares about acknowledging responsibility in this instance. Isn't the point to provide useful information so as to fix the problem?

Or “you broke Reddit” style, where that’s never the case.

What? You mean, this whole time my teenage vitriol and emoji laden angst did nothing?!

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