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It's not a new trend - error-code based software would propagate that ERROR_INVALID_PARAMETER all the way from the function with the invalid parameter back out to the return value of the user operation, then helpfully tell the user "Invalid parameter!"

Exceptions with string messages and full stack traces might be yet another underrated Java invention.



God that error is nearly useless even to the developer. Last couple of times I've gotten it, I've dropped the DLL that the error originates from into Binary Ninja and run the debugger to figure out which parameter failed a check.


I've most recently embraced more complex error objects. It's quite a feeling to get an error description a la

  Failed to open configuration file
  Caused by: 
    Failed to open path PATH
    Error access denied


Dr Watson is still a thing for getting tracebacks. Doesn’t work for kernel mode of course, but most things don’t.


Do you ask your users to run some weird debug tool when the dialog box says "Invalid parameter!"

Does it help? The stack trace at the point where the dialog box is displayed is useless.


Even that at least helps rule out the most common issues, and is less frustrating than an update pooping out 0x80070070 and making you manually translate it to ERROR_DISK_FULL.




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