I agree with Walter about error numbers being a bad idea.
Especially when people prefer the numbers over a description.
MySQL has really turned me off the idea of error numbers. When I
get an error about MySQL syntax, the message actually reads like
this.
"Error near <snippet> <line number> <column number> ... <error
number>"
It never tells you what kind of syntax error you made, or
*exactly* where it actually happened (The line and column numbers
are misleading.). You just get a message "well it broke" and an
error number which might as well be the result of a hash
function. As a result, I hardly ever look up the error number,
and I just make a guess as to what I did wrong. It's usually
faster to guess.
It's kind of like the effect bug IDs can have on commit
messagses, which I mentioned in another thread. If you put some
ID you can search for in a message, some people have a tendency
to rely on the ID and forget about providing a descriptive
message as well.
I think a better approach is to just describe the error better.
When I use DMD I get some pretty good results already for errors.
We just need to patch messages which may be confusing at the
moment into being more descriptive.
