I spend a lot of time coding in a lot of languages, with a lot of libraries, with a lot of obscure error messages. I don’t check any language or platform’s “official online docs” and I haven’t touched a hardcopy manual in years. No, the resource I reach for first is Google. But I don’t aim for results that look topical so I can examine them more closely. For me a search for an API call or bug fix is truly successful if I can see what I need to know in the excerpts without clicking through any results at all.
Give it a try for a little while.
If so, then the optimal error message is prefixed with a unique url into a public wiki. Adding your language's version of
urlescape(__FILE__), __LINE__
or the relevant stackframe would make it happen nearly automatically
Dear cariaso,
That's the best idea I've heard all week.
Jonathan