This is a rant about how so many apps on many different platforms (TVs, mobile devices, computers, etc…) have decided to not actually show detailed errors any more. Instead, we get something along the lines of:

Oops, somehting went wrong. Please try again later

… and then, well, we get to figure out what just happened and what in the world we need to do about it. And good luck with that, since you have no idea what just failed.

Why software developers?!? Why have you forsaken us?

EDIT 24 hours later: I feel like I need to clarify a few things:

I’ve worked for 8 software companies over 30+ years. I know why putting a DB error into the message users see is a bad idea. I know that makes me uncommon, but I still want more info from these messages.

You all are answering as if there are only two ways this can work: (a) what we have now (which is useless), and (b) a detailed error listing showing a full stack trace. I think the developers could meet me half-way.

What I want is either (a) “Something went wrong on the server, you can’t fix it, but we will” or (b) “Something on your end didn’t work. Check your network or restart the app or do something differently and then try the same thing again”. And if they’re blocking me because I’m using a VPN, fucking say so (but that’s a whole separate thing…)

Some apps do provide enough info so I have a clue what I should do next, and I appreciate the effort they put into helping me. I think what I am really ranting about is I want more developers to take the time to do this instead of reporting all errors with “Oops, try again”. (If the error is in their server, why should I try again?) Give me a hint as to the problem, so I have something to go on.

Cheers y’all. Still love you my techy brothers and sisters.

  • Cryophilia@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    4 hours ago

    Crash logs are sent to the servers when a client side error happens

    How? I mean how is it possible to send a crash log to the server when the problem is that the client can’t connect to the server?

    You by definition don’t see most of these errors except maybe as pings, depending on why it can’t connect

    • hperrin@lemmy.caEnglish
      1·
      3 hours ago

      If it’s a mobile app, the operating system handles crash logs, and reports them to you through your app management portal. Then for connection issues to the host or handled errors, you can store that in your app’s data store, and upload them once connection is restored.

      If it’s a web app, you can save them in local storage through your service worker, then upload them once the connection is restored. If you don’t have a high level error handling function on your web app, that’s an issue with your web app, not your logging infrastructure.

      For a network outage error, these aren’t usually reported if the problem is on the client side, since that’s not something we can do anything about. Both mobile apps and service workers can tell if the operating system is disconnected from the network. If it’s an issue connecting to our host (host is unreachable, but network is online), that’s when we’d save the issue and log it later once service is restored.

      We can tell when our services go offline, because we have health checks on our hosts. So, technically, we don’t need client side reporting if our hosts are down. But, every place I’ve worked at has had them anyway.

      Analytics don’t usually run on the same hosts as services, so if your service goes down, that doesn’t mean your analytics platform is down. I mentioned before how many systems there are in big tech services. Analytics is one of those systems. It’s generally completely separate from user facing services.