Non-specific error messages without a recourse are the bane of my existence. I need something I can do. An action i can take to fix the issue.

In my professional life, my job is to fix it, so a vague meaningless error message means hours of trying things. Depending on impact, this might sit broken for days while other things of higher priority get the attention. (Given my position, others come to me with these things they couldn’t figure out.)

In my personal life, I take affront. Providing a layperson with such useless errors seems a disservice. They can’t use the product or service without a reason why. Those like me might work around it, and friends or family sometimes some to me for help. We should all do better about holding the providers to account.

Troubleshooting is an art. It helps to have a wealth of knowledge about system failure modes along with resolutions. It makes sense for professional information technologists who ensure computers remain operational to know. As technology expands, everyone encounters failures more often. Providers know they should trap errors and send something useful. There will be times when errors escape, but most of the time, they should either get automatically corrected or tell the user something useful.