Re: Uncaught Errors in Interactive Programs and the Users that Ignore the Errors

[Bruce Vining <bvining@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Personally this is when I like to have a global monitor to catch the
unexpected. It stops the user from seeing the inquiry message (and obviously
if they don't see it, they can't respond to it :) ), and allows my on-error
handler to, well, handle it. Gather some data and then send a message of my
own indicating that a severe error was encountered. As I write general
purpose code which will run in various environments my message just goes to
the joblog. If you control your application environment then, in addition to
a message to the joblog, I would send a message to support identifying the
job and problem.

You should see a few articles on this, by me, in the near future if you
subscribe to SystemiNews.

Bruce

On Thu, Feb 25, 2010 at 8:33 AM, Mike <koldark@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> I am growing tired of this. An error pops up, the user hits 'C' to cancel
> the program then tries again. Maybe this time it worked, so they continue
> on
> with their job. The next day, "Why is my data not here?" So now we have to
> back out the changes to allow them to reprocess the data so it runs
> correctly.
>
> I am sure I am not unique in this situation. No amount of drilling in to
> them will get them to call us when there is an error. They are just drones
> doing what their job is.
>
> So, I know there are a few methods out there on how to "fix" this problem
> (so we know about the problem so we can fix the edge-case bug). I am
> thinking I would like to send an email to both developers with the job log
> when such errors happen. By the time we get the email, it may be too late,
> but at least we have something logged.
>
> How would you handle this?
>
> --
> Mike Wills
> http://mikewills.info
> P: (507) 933-0880 | Skype: koldark
> --
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