Sounds like a "temporary" error message.
this post was submitted on 09 Dec 2023
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Willing to bet that the backend that they are using doesn't actually give any useful error messages.
Why use many words when few do trick but for system logs.
Would they surface that to the user anyway? That's something to log, not to tell the client that xyz service failed because of error 123.
I hate this attitude. Yeah don't give the user stacktraces on error but if you give it a meaningful headline and go in detail, experienced users will be able to deal with the problem if possible. If you go Microsoft-error of mystic ways you will have people Google "unexpected error e34566xce" and they will see that it has 10 possible reasons so you don't know what even went wrong.
Anyone who says error codes shouldn't bubble up to the user are incompetent. Either because an incompetent PM infantilizes their users, or more likely because incompetent teams don't/won't take an extra 10 minutes to do proper error handling (and they suffer from this as well since they're the ones who spend hours deciphering the result of a try {} catch(_) { error("we did a fucky wucky uwu") }).
There's nothing a user is going to be able to do if this is a problem with the backend. The person I replied to did specify backend, right?
Thin line between giving useful error messages and more attack surface.
If your code gives attack surface by information about what went wrong maybe you should not even deploy anything. If your code needs to be secret to be secure your code is anything but secure.
Not code but internet. A often seen error is letting Appache/Nginx display their name & version in 403/404 pages. First step in planning an attack.
No, please tell the user. They've got their big boy pants on and can handle seeing one or two weird squiggles in the worst case, and might be able to actually diagnose and fix the issue themselves (without having to go through support) in the best case.
If it’s a backend/service issue, tell the user, but the bare minimum. You shouldn’t disclose too much info about your system to the end user (think of stack traces, error codes unique to some dependency you’re using) as it may give an attacker some valuable information.
Network failed because net didnt work.
Tbf if the client fails to reach the server, there isn't much more detail they can provide. At least it brings a little levity
Had the displeasure of using the modern EA app the other week -- completely refuses to launch my copy of Jedi: Fallen Order in the foreground after a single play-session (Steam -> EA just doesn't work for some people).
jesus. Talk about bad software...
My friend downloaded the friend pass of it takes two and ea just said you don't own the game and refused to launch the game... Appearntly there's a fix to download a free game and then it works again but wtf the support and moderates just closed the thread where this issue got raised the first time without giving a universal solution on what to try Tldr EA is the worst
I had the same problem with Fallen Order the first day; the workaround in that particular case was to launch the game's executable directly; which let me play that one, single time. A few days later and both the original workaround (and others) & no-workarounds caused the game to launch in the background, with no way to force it to the foreground.
In Fallen Order's case specifically; there appeared to be a launcher-specific wrapper executable, and the game itself. When the workaround stopped working, the launcher-specific wrapper is what was getting ran in the background; but the game itself never actually appeared. Additionally, reinstalling the game several times did not resolve any issue; nor other troubleshooting steps from EA.
Origin was also a pretty crap piece of software (compared to Steam, anyway); but this is a new low from EA, imo. Its a shame too, because I liked what I got to see in Fallen Order, especially recently getting into souls games.
The network... In the cloud... It does mysterious things!
I can just imagine something in the middle being like
`We couldn't log you in because ${getReason(e) || 'the network failed to do its network thing'}.`
100% this is what happened. Also, it's its not it's, right?
it’s its not it’s, right?
I always get tripped up on this case. What's shown in the picture is correct, though you're applying the rules of English grammar very logically, the apostrophe in it's is only for contraction, not possession. That may go out the window if someone uses it as a pronoun though, idk.
If all the corporations can just stop trying to be cute in their error messages, that would be great. This is literally worse than "ERROR: Unknown Error" because this goes out of its way to taunt you while still giving you no actionable information.
I see nothing wrong with it
How can the client know the back end issue
And
What’s the point of giving it to the end user
Any fix would be the user contacting the company and the error code is there. Follow ups would be a traceroute
Depends if this cure message is a psuedonym for the real message. Kind of you have a different quip for each one, then reporting it the Devs will know what the issue is but any bad actors won't be able to try and discern cause and effect from any exploits they are trying (or at least make it harder)
All my error messages are haikus.
I feel like this takes the edge off of getting an error. Or, maybe it makes it worse. I like to think it's more calming.
In code, a misstep, Life's work fades into the void, Silent echoes mourn.
Yeah, that was nice. Definitely more calming.
We couldn't log in.
Net didn't do network thing.
Please try again soon.
Keys not aligning,
Username, password astray,
Entry gate stays closed.
I'd like that to be an acceptable autoreply to all the mails from my boss.
at least theres an error code?
Wibbly-wobbly nerky-networky things