Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!att!linac!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!samsung!uunet!comp.vuw.ac.nz!waikato!ldo
From: ldo@waikato.ac.nz (Lawrence D'Oliveiro, Waikato University)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.system
Subject: Re: REJOICE, New bombs in 6.0.7
Message-ID: <2115.272d985a@waikato.ac.nz>
Date: 30 Oct 90 02:12:26 GMT
References: <15565@hydra.gatech.EDU> <40549@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU>
Organization: University of Waikato, Hamilton, New Zealand
Lines: 28

In <40549@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU>, tj@cs.ucla.edu (Tom Johnson) says,

"I personally don't see that [having the new messages for system
crashes in System 6.0.7] makes much difference. If the program
crashes, then it crashes."

I have to agree with this one. As I keep explaining to users who
ask me about them, those ID numbers stand for all sorts of arcane
things that can go wrong, that you really don't want to know about,
anyway.

Even speaking as a programmer, I have found very few of those
messages to be much use, diagnostically speaking. Most of the
problems with my programs tend to happen from faulty logic
making things run amuck until they fall over from random causes.

The one exception to this has been the "stack overflow" error.
When this happens, it usually means what it says, and there's
usually a simple cause.

Question: will the next release of MacsBug have all these
nice descriptive messages added to it...?

Lawrence D'Oliveiro                       fone: +64-71-562-889
Computer Services Dept                     fax: +64-71-384-066
University of Waikato            electric mail: ldo@waikato.ac.nz
Hamilton, New Zealand    37^ 47' 26" S, 175^ 19' 7" E, GMT+13:00
You are in a maze of twisty little Word 4.0 dialog boxes, all different.