why do error messages go like “install failure error 0001” instead of telling the user what’s wrong

Question

why do error messages go like “install failure error 0001” instead of telling the user what’s wrong

In: 1812

Answer 1

There are multiple parts in your question:

(1) “Why doesn’t the error simply explain what’s the problem?”. Because most users don’t want a full page of “error in function ‘various_update_ter’ when called in function ‘supervision_step_phantom’ when called in function […] : Segmentation Fault.”. This error report can be used to patch the bug in a future release (so some software will ask you permission to send an error report), but is not much use to the average user.

(2) “Why doesn’t the error simply explain to me what to do to fix the problem?” Because if the developer knew the solution in advance, there wouldn’t be an error displayed in the first place. Outside of errors like “wrong password”, if there was a solution known the program would use it instead printing an error messages. Modern softwares are full of error catching mechanisms, meaning that errors occurs but the developer knows why so also programmed the solution instead of printing a message to ask the user to do it.