# Goofball error messages

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/goofball-error-messages/262871>\
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\
**Created:** [September 3, 2004, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/goofball-error-messages/262871 "2004-09-03T00:22:27Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Page:** 2

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![MLS](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/919ad9/32.png) [@MLS](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MLS)\
**Post date:** [September 3, 2004, 11:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/goofball-error-messages/262871/21 "2004-09-03T23:26:48Z")

</div>

Having programmed for a decade or 2, I’ve seen lots of error messages that lazy or mischievous programmers have inserted. A current joke among some of my co-workers is that you know it’s the work of a certain team member when the message is “Insert Error Handling Here.” Another classic was “Jim is a ninny.” Or “This should never happen.” He forgets to take out debug code.

We once saw an error dialog from some commercial software – may even have been Microsoft – that was an empty box except for a single button that read, “OK.” 😕

In another company, one guy wrote a utility that was intended for use in-house. It was a pretty good utility. Somebody gave it out to a customer. Boy, was that customer steamed the first time he got "You forgot to load \<database handler name\>, Bud. "

[Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/goofball-error-messages/262871.md?page=1)