I'm not presenting that as an "official Microsoft position". I just know I've heard it discussed.
Hey - don't take it out on me. Follow Kevin's advice. :-) Regards, Michael B. Smith MCSE/Exchange MVP http://TheEssentialExchange.com -----Original Message----- From: Ben Scott [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, June 04, 2008 12:24 PM To: MS-Exchange Admin Issues Subject: Bad diagnostics (was: Strange pair of events twice daily) On Wed, Jun 4, 2008 at 10:56 AM, Michael B. Smith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > It sounds weird, but good error messages cause code bloat. Is that seriously the explanation Microsoft gives for having such consistently lousy diagnostics? I'm sorry, but I don't buy that. For one, Microsoft has never been one to worry about code bloat. With all the stuff they cram into their products, are you seriously suggesting that they had to sacrifice the error messages to make room? For another, the messages are often quite verbose, just uninformative and vague. The pattern I frequently see is generic error messages with dozens of words, explaining all the various things that *might* have gone wrong, rather than identifying the operation which actually failed. It seems like things break deep inside, and by the time the user interface reports it, all that's left is "Something went wrong". I also find the localization argument unmoving. The result appears to be messages that are not useful even to native English speakers. What is more helpful, a useful diagnostic in a single language, or a useless diagnostic in multiple languages? It's like the old joke about a stopped clock vs a clock that's ten minutes slow. The stopped clock shows the correct time more often than the slow clock (twice a day vs never), so obviously the stopped clock must be better, right? -- Ben ~ Ninja Email Security with Cloudmark Spam Engine Gets Image Spam ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Ninja ~ ~ Ninja Email Security with Cloudmark Spam Engine Gets Image Spam ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Ninja ~
