That time a senior dev told me my error messages were useless

He said 'nobody reads error codes, they read the words next to them.' So I stopped writing 'Error 401' and started writing 'Your session expired, log in again.' Cut our support tickets by about 40 percent in two weeks. Has anyone else gotten feedback that seemed small but totally flipped your approach?

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holly8983mo ago

Used to think error codes were fine but this makes way more sense.

9

john_murphy3mo ago

Error codes feel lazy once you see this. Plain language actually helps people fix things faster. Confusing users just to sound technical is bad design.

3