loqi comments on Learned Blankness - Less Wrong

130 Post author: AnnaSalamon 18 April 2011 06:55PM

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Comment author: Vladimir_M 19 April 2011 07:38:33PM 2 points [-]

Sometimes my critical contribution to helping another programmer solve a problem basically consists of reading the fascinating error message.

If you can figure out the problem from a syntax error message with C++ templates, your contribution is certainly far from trivial!

Comment author: loqi 21 April 2011 07:40:25AM *  2 points [-]

It's funny you say that, I once figured out a problem for someone by diagnosing an error message with C++ templates. Wizardry! However, the "base" of the error message looked roughly like

error: unknown type "boost::python::specify_a_return_value_policy_to_wrap_functions_returning<Foo>"

Cryptic, right? It turns out he needed to specify a return value policy in order to wrap a function returning Foo. All I did for him was scan past junk visually looking for anything readable or the word "error".

Comment author: TeMPOraL 22 April 2013 01:27:17PM 1 point [-]

That's the general algorithm of reading STL error messages. I still can't get why people look at you as if you were a wizard, if all that you need to do is to quickly filter out irrelevant 90% of the message. Simple pattern matching exercise.