value of documenting error messages?

[Bryan Richter]

By the way, to summarize the discussion on #325, I think the words to use
would be "overwhelming support for short numeric reference ids".

Here's my argument for it:

1. If you try to make the unique id some mangled form of the error's name,
the cognitive burden of crafting errors is increased. Professional
experience leads me to believe this is no laughing matter.

2. A unique id will never replace pithy error messages, clear error names,
nor detailed reference documentation anyway.

3. Numeric ids are internationalized (well, at least multi-nationalized) by
construction.

4. Numeric ids, having no intrinsic meaning, are perfectly
forward-compatible with any potential evolution of error names or
descriptions.


-Bryan


On Wed, Jun 2, 2021 at 10:15 PM Jakob Brünker <jakob.bruenker at gmail.com>
wrote:

> For what it's worth, there is an existing proposal about this topic, maybe
> that's the right place to discuss it for a user-focused perspective.
>
> See https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals/pull/325
>
> Jakob
>
> On Wed, Jun 2, 2021 at 9:10 PM Tom Ellis <
> tom-lists-haskell-cafe-2017 at jaguarpaw.co.uk> wrote:
>
>> On Wed, Jun 02, 2021 at 07:03:25PM +0000, Richard Eisenberg wrote:
>> > > To me this seems like a rare opportunity to do something where people
>> > > will say "Hey look, that formidable Haskell compiler is doing
>> > > something that's friendlier than the equivalent in any other
>> > > compiler!".  For such an important user-facing feature I don't
>> > > understand why we're not asking users what they prefer.
>> >
>> > I agree completely here! Let's ask! (Remember that this thread,
>> > posted to ghc-devs, was originally about documenting the GHC source
>> > code, something that would not affect users.)
>>
>> Yes indeed.  Let's one of us start a user-focused thread elsewhere
>> (whoever gets round to it first) and post a link here so interested
>> parties here can join in.
>>
>> Tom
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