Communicating via Diagnostics: Observations and Tips for Authors
summary
Diagnostics matter: state the violated contract, the actual value and the valid range, and give a clear corrective step; call out precondition failures and postcondition failures when they occur and note invariant breaches; prefer assertions for impossible runtime assumptions but keep asserts pure so checks have no side effects; use plain language, avoid blaming users, and always be helpful with explicit, actionable instructions rather than cryptic codes.
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chapters (7)
- 0:00Intro
- 0:27Things go wrong
- 2:22Using asserts
- 3:30Reporting errors
- 4:15A terse baffling remark
- 4:53Guidelines
- 6:05Summary
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