General rant about Microsoft 8xxxxxxx error codes

[drbanks]

Being a software developer of more than a few years, I've come to learn that when writing the part of the software that interfaces with the end user (generally, the UI), you should never spew information that only makes sense to a programmer. Give a user/human digestible error message, and save the programmer stuff in a log or somewhere the interested parties can get at it.

This means that a user should never see "Java Vomit" (stack traces), mystery error codes and general commentary about the state of the back-end database.

Microsoft just doesn't seem to get this. We're in our nth version of Windows (desktop), and at least the fourth iteration on mobile (Wince, WP 7, WP 7.5, WP 8 and WP 8.1), yet we still see 800xxxxx error messages popping up all over the place. We have gigabytes of storage on these phones, both ROM and RAM, and a table that translates the error to something a little more meaningful to a human wouldn't even take up a small fraction of a gigabyte, yet we see these brain dead error codes.

If you get some error code on your Windows phone that's 8 digits long and starts with an 8... heck, if you get any numeric error code (beyond a browser 404, and even that's suspect) that's supposed to mean something to you, but it doesn't, don't feel stupid. You're probably smarter than the person who wrote the application, thinking that the error code is the best way to report a failure.

 

[anon(8657436)]

You can always google the error codes for SPECIFIC info. A dumbed down description of error won't allow that. Maybe they need to mix the error code with a good description. And most error codes aren't isolated events, How can you dumb down a stack overflow for example?

 

[drbanks]

You dumb it down as best you can, then offer a more detail or "send to Microsoft" to give the engineers the full detail. I just wouldn't be giving that detail to your mom.

Users shouldn't have to be engineers.

 

[anon(8657436)]

See, at least we agree on that point. Best of both.

 

[Amorphou]

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