I'm perfectly capable of remembering 3 digits for a short time.
So would I be, if I didn't get interrupted three times
on my way from the circ desk to my desk (twenty feet)
to fix the problem :-)
Error messages are sent to me by email. The
one time per week that someone actually calls, they're
always reading it off the screen. Perhaps you code for
the internetless?
Close. Think in terms of people who print email and
have to disconnect from the internet to use the phone.
Also, I said "End Users", so think in terms of people
who don't know how to copy and paste. (Really. I've
been teaching introductory computer classes twice a
month at the library since 2000 and have by doing so
significantly increased the number of people in town
who copy and paste. Yes,
Galion is a fairly technophobic community. People
have access to the internet, but they're not
comfortable with it.)
Nearly half of the bug reports I get are on
sticky notes. Most of the rest are delivered verbally,
either in person (this is WAY more common than you
would suspect) or on the phone -- and, as noted,
almost all of the internet connections around here
are dialup, and most people don't have a second line
for voice, so they have to disconnect to use the phone.
Couple that with an end-user mentality that requires
them to "x out of" (i.e., close) the web browser in
order to disconnect, and you have a recipe for not
being able to remember an error message to give it
to me. When I first started this job, vanishingly
close to 100% of the bug reports I got were totally
useless, along the lines of "it didn't work".
Worse, when I started asking them to write down
the error message next time and bring it to me,
I discovered that they had no idea what to write
down and so usually wrote down a non-unique part of
the message. (No amount of cajoling can get most
end users to write down an _entire_ error message
if it has any length to it at all.)
An error message like "Grouchy Pickles" will actually
_get_ to me, because it sticks in the user's head;
then I grep for it, and I know which
line the error occurred on, which is more than
I was usually able to discover from error reports
before I adopted this technique.
If you're writing stuff that gets used mostly by
powerusers then you probably won't need this technique.
;$;=sub{$/};@;=map{my($a,$b)=($_,$;);$;=sub{$a.$b->()}}
split//,".rekcah lreP rehtona tsuJ";$\=$;[-1]->();print
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I never knew such people could get jobs where they work with computers.
Most of the people in question are patrons; they may
or may not use computers at work (about 50% I estimate),
but those who do mostly only use them at work for
highly field-specific applications.
Is there no computer education there?
I don't have much trouble with people who are still
in school; we're mostly talking about adults here,
especially from about age 35 up. The library (where
I work) pretty much *is* their source of education.
The ones who have kids at home and _get along with
them_ can learn computers from their kids, of course,
but that doesn't cover everyone. My view of the
community's education level is probably slanted a bit
since people who already understand computers don't
feel the need to come to the library for help with
them, but it remains true that when there's a problem
with one of the library's web thingies, I invariably
hear about it from somebody with a very poor
understanding of computers and a fundamental inability
to remember the exact words of an error message
unless it's very short and nontechnical.
Please do not let your software be distributed outside your (hopefully small) post-it scribbling community.
This is mostly custom web stuff I'm talking about,
but due to the nature of the website (small public
library), almost all users are local to the
community. No, I don't put this sort of error
messages in modules intended for the CPAN.
I fear very much that I ever get a pickled error message.
Now you're just being silly.
;$;=sub{$/};@;=map{my($a,$b)=($_,$;);$;=sub{$a.$b->()}}
split//,".rekcah lreP rehtona tsuJ";$\=$;[-1]->();print
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