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I did some programming for a German Engineering Company. I quickly learned that clarity of error messages counted alot and for good reason as many of the users were not engineers and were just average folks.
"Gemütlichkeit" was their catch phrase for "user friendly" software at the time (80-90's).
Language can be a tricky thing, at times.
Once I was in large German department store during holiday. It was quite crowded. Waiting in a line some folks broke up the line by wandering through. I could not think of the German phrase for "excuse me there is a line here", so I blurted out "Achtung" (attention). The crowd parted like the Red Sea. My German companion laughed and said they thought I was a policeman directing them to "make way". Live and learn.
Bottom line, "error messages are quite important".
"A little time, a little trouble, your better day"
Badfinger
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From Reader's Digest of about 50 years ago. (Much before Google)
Somebody visited West Germany for the first time, and saw signboards of 'Ausfahrt' at many places, and was initially of the idea that Ausfahrt is huge city, to which all these roads lead. However no place called Ausfahrt was found on the map. Only later did he find out that Ausfahrt means Exit.
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"A little time, a little trouble, your better day"
Badfinger
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To be fair, which is exactly where all those signs led!😉
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jmaida wrote: error messages counted a lot and for good reason as many of the users were not engineers and were just average folks.
Could somebody tell Microsoft, please? PLEASE?
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Great story! Reminds me of Blinkenlights[^]. 
ACHTUNG!
ALLES TURISTEN UND NONTEKNISCHEN LOOKENSPEEPERS!
DAS KOMPUTERMASCHINE IST NICHT FÜR DER GEFINGERPOKEN UND MITTENGRABEN! ODERWISE IST EASY TO SCHNAPPEN DER SPRINGENWERK, BLOWENFUSEN UND POPPENCORKEN MIT SPITZENSPARKEN.
IST NICHT FÜR GEWERKEN BEI DUMMKOPFEN. DER RUBBERNECKEN SIGHTSEEREN KEEPEN DAS COTTONPICKEN HÄNDER IN DAS POCKETS MUSS.
ZO RELAXEN UND WATSCHEN DER BLINKENLICHTEN.
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"A little time, a little trouble, your better day"
Badfinger
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In the old days, Norwegian trains had windows that you could open. There was a warning note on the window sill, stating in Norwegian "Det er farlig å lene seg ut av vinduet" (Leaning out of the windows in dangerous), in English: "Please do not lean out of the window", and then, in twice as large letters, boldface, uppercase only, in German: "ES IST STRENGSTENS VERBOTEN, SICH AUS DEM FENSTER ZU LEHNEN".
When I was a teenager, these sticky notes were disappearing: People like me and my friends pulled them off to put them on the sills of our bedroom windows. Few years later, those carriages with windows that could be opened were gone.
Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.
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When I was 14 (early 70s) I broke my leg whilst on a school skiing trip, in Austria. Was taken pronto to the Bezirkskrankenhaus (well, it made me laugh, even at the time). I was on a trolley in a corridor (yes it happened even then, in Austria!) and a lot of medical-looking people came by and tried to establish from me what was wrong. About 4 or 5 failed to communicate (I knew zero German) and wandered off. Eventually I had inspiration (memory of some old war film, I think) and the next one that came along, I just pointed to my leg and said (slowly, loudly and clearly of course) "Ist kaput". That's all that was needed - got whisked through and treated within minutes. 
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In the pre-PC, pre-Linux days, I was working in a company making their own machines, their proprietary systems programming language and of course their own compiles. Sometimes it crashed fatally with the message "Something wrong".
We started competing: Who can make the shortest, simplest program that creates a "Something wrong" crash. Of course we reported to the compiler responsible, and the next (or maybe second) compiler release handled that case. But as "Something wrong" was a catch-all comparable to "Unhandled exception", we regularly came up with new cases. The shortest program to result in "Something wrong" was four lines long  , about as complex as "HelloWorld".
Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.
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that's funny we did similar experimentations.
wow pre-linux goes back a bit, but I do recall those days.
"A little time, a little trouble, your better day"
Badfinger
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My favourite error messages:
The late, great pTerry: Mr. Jelly! Mr. Jelly! Error at Address Number 6, Treacle Mine Road.
The late, great pTerry: +++ Divide By Cucumber Error. Please Reinstall Universe And Reboot +++
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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These responses are most excellent and hilarious.
I have to wonder though. When I try to update Windows, it errors out with a 0xC00XXXXXX error, sorry, we blah blah blah. I have to wonder who is minding the store.
Charlie Gilley
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
Has never been more appropriate.
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As I have learnt proper error messages should contain the information to cure the problem, the 'Oh Dear that can't happen message' can be a little more comic to relive stress.
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glennPattonWork3 wrote: , the 'Oh Dear that can't happen message' can be a little more comic to relive stress.
Sadly... depending on who reads that message, it might get the contrary effect and generate even more stress 
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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glennPattonWork3 wrote: Oh Dear that can't happen message
Imagine such a message coming on a car dashboard while someone is driving at high speed on a highway, ...
... or on the control panel of a medical imaging equipment while a technician is amidst an imaging procedure on a patient, or worse of all, ...
... on the main screen in the cockpit of a long haul commercial flight at 35000 feet.
Can happen, though the probability is quite (infinitesimally?) low.
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Amarnath S wrote: the probability is quite (infinitesimally?) low
I tend to distinguish between cases were the probability is less than epsilon squared and those where epsilon squared is negative. I give less attention to the second group than to the first.
Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.
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I do the user interfaces in our commercial ink-jet printing systems. There are more than 1,000 error messages defined, a number of which are "programming errors". A programming error is one where the code detects an error condition (out of memory, say) and then just throws up its hands and gives up. To quote Peter Griffin from Family Guy, these really grind my gears. All of these get directed to a generic message "An internal software failure has occurred. Please contact your service representative (symbol)" where symbol identifies the actual error.
More generally, error messages should identify the problem and guide the user to a solution: "Sensor A is out of calibration; adjust parameters A1, A2, and/or A3 to measured values." Even if the solution is to restart the application or the entire machine, this is what your users need for you to do. Telling them "It's broke" and thinking they'll just know how to fix it is contemptible.
Software Zen: delete this;
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Our printing systems are a little larger scale than that. We can print full color duplex at 17 feet of paper per second and systems run $1.5M-2.5M.
That said the desktop folks learned the basics of their business model from us. Our machines sell relatively close to cost. We make money on ink (which comes in anything from 5L cubes to 208L drums to 1000L pallet containers), printhead refurbishment (a $50,000 printhead can be refurbed for much less), and service.
The corporate bullshit about defeaturing scan when you're low on ink, disabling black printing when you're low on color, etc. isn't specific to ink-jet. It's any excuse to nickel-and-dime the customer. It's an attitude that once you've bought the machine you're a captive customer. What they don't realize is that when you're printer is <$100 and your ink is $25-$40 per cartridge the customer doesn't give a ![Elephant | [mastadon]](https://codeproject.global.ssl.fastly.net/script/Forums/Images/elephant.gif) who makes their printer. If you piss them off, they will buy something else.
I used to be an HP loyalist because at one time their hardware was good and their ink cartridges lasted for months with my casual usage. Not any longer. The recent batch of malware/adware from HP was the last straw. I tossed out my HP printer and bought a Canon instead. If Canon turns out be untrustworthy in some way, I'll switch to something else.
Software Zen: delete this;
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Gary R. Wheeler wrote: We make money on ink (which comes in anything from 5L cubes to 208L drums to 1000L pallet containers),
Reminds me of a price list I saw many moons ago for toner cartridges for the HP Laserjet III: Prices was stated for 1 unit, 12 units, a pallet (I believe that was 144 units), and then a truckload of toner cartridges.
(Deep in my old paper archives there is a xerox of that price list, but it is too deep down for me to dig it out tonight to check how many units a truckload was. I believe it was in the order of 8000 units.)
Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.
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It always pays to cover all bases!
Every switch statement that I write contains a default clause. This is true even when switching on an enumerated type, because the underlying variable is an int (or another integral type), and it is possible that the value got corrupted.
enum {SUNDAY, MONDAY, TUESDAY, WEDNESDAY, THURSDAY, FRIDAY, SATURDAY} weekday;
weekday = SATURDAY;
++weekday;
switch (weekday)
{
case SUNDAY: ...; break;
case MONDAY: ...; break;
case TUESDAY: ...; break;
case WEDNESDAY: ...; break;
case THURSDAY: ...; break;
case FRIDAY: ...; break;
case SATURDAY: ... break;
default: report("weekday out of bounds!");
}
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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That doesn't generate error here... we start the week on Monday 
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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The problem is rooted in
Daniel Pfeffer wrote: the underlying variable is an int (or another integral type)
If enumeration was a first class type, "++weekday;" (given Daniel Pfeffer's enum definition) would generate a runtime error, similar to a numeric overflow exception. Unless, of course if the enumeration type allows an enum to be defined as cyclical, in which case the new value would be SUNDAY.
Nelek wrote: That doesn't generate error here... we start the week on Monday
First: I think that goes for all of Western Europe nowadays. We (Norway) changed from Sunday to Monday as the first day of the week something like 40-50 years ago to be in harmony with other European countries.
As the English term is 'weekend', and Sunday is part of the weekend, I always assumed that Sunday ended the week in English speaking countries. I was surprised to learn that while this is true in GB, in the US of A it appears that the week ends one day before the weekend ends.
A little nitpicking: Different cultures disagree about the first day of the week. If you make software for use in multiple cultures, you cannot (or at least should not) replace the enum definition when you start marketing the software in a new region; that could result in subtle errors. Rather, the enum definition should be completely ignorant of which value is considered to be the position of the air valve on the rotating wheel.
So, Daniel Pfeffer's definition is perfectly OK, even in Europe, assuming that his application code never makes any assumption about the first enum value being the first day of the week. Given that enum is not a first class type, the code would correctly go to the default case even in Europe.
If your language allows: Overload ++ for the weekday type, to make weekday++ == SUNDAY when the old value of weekday == SATURDAY. Then it doesn't matter.
Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.
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