When an app gets an "too technical" error condition, will you display it as an error code or a descriptive string ?
For example, to connect to a server, it may have different kinds of errors : no server found, protocol not supported, invalid cert, cert expiration, timeout, connection made but no reply after that .....
In this case, which one will cause less annoying to the *users* : an error code, or an explanation ?
I think it depends on who the error message is targetted to. It could be targetted to the user, tech support or you the programmer. And each should get different levels of detail. With the
Something to the user wouldn't need an error code unless there's somewhere they can look it up and fix.
To tech support, an error code would be helpful so there's no confusion on what the problem is and where to find the solution.
To the developer, I like file and line numbers so that it's explicitly clear where things are going wrong.
And one would target the message to the lowest level person who might need it. If tech support or a developer might need some detail, it should probably be included in case they do. It's not that bad if there's too much detail, but it sucks if there's not enough.
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