~/talk

Yes, Your Error Messages Can Be Beautiful And Developers Can Love Them

Talkat DevRelCon Earth 2020 · 2020-06-30..07-30· [developer-experience]
slides:none on file

Argues error messages can be delightful and reviews concrete fixes and examples: V8’s long-standing “undefined is not a function” is shown as a concealment problem, Perl’s helpful tone and Elm’s highlighted code snippets are held up as models, and Rust borrows Elm’s approach. Recommends highlight failing code segment, add unique error URLs for searchable, linkable remediation, involve technical writers, capture analytics and prioritize setup and log‑trapped errors so fixes reduce support load and actually improve adoption.

AI-written summary · about

  1. 0:00Introduction to error messages
  2. 1:09Why care about error messages
  3. 6:30Examples of bad error messages
  4. 11:22Why error messages are poorly written
  5. 12:51Examples of beautiful error messages
  6. 14:58Context in error messages
  7. 16:25How developers interact with errors
  8. 18:33Improving error message discoverability
  9. 19:44Prioritizing error message fixes
  10. 20:54Metrics and feedback for errors
  11. 21:16Summary and call to action
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