On Mon, 18 Apr 2011 09:08:55 +0100, Invisible wrote:

>>> In short, almost nothing is documented. I find this extremely
>>> frustrating.
>>
>> Now it's been years since I had to seriously look up a Windows error
>> code, but it at least used to be that the MS Knowledgebase was pretty
>> good about having the things I needed (usually STOP error codes). 
>> Maybe that's changed since I switched to Linux; the last Windows thing
>> I did was set up a 2008 server and XP clients for our mobile testing
>> centre, but I don't use Windows if I don't have to (as you probably
>> know by now).
> 
> STOP messages you can usually look up. (Almost all of them mean
> "something happened which is never supposed to happen. Go check your
> hardware and device drivers." But then, I guess that's the nature of a
> kernel failure...)

Um, yes, STOP messages are a type of ABEND (ie, Abnormal End) of the 
kernel.

But those aren't the only error messages I ever had to look up, and I 
never really had a problem finding *something* about the error I was 
running into, that was my point.

>>> The Commodore 64 came with an extensive (yet surprisingly small) user
>>> manual
>>
>> Yes, the C64, with only 64 KB of memory and a 1 Mhz (more or less)
>> processor was a much simpler machine from a much simpler time.
>> Similarly, the Model T Ford was a lot simpler than the hybrid Ford
>> Focus.  That should really not be that surprising. ;)
> 
> By contrast, the GHC user manual expects you to already know Haskell,
> and its description of the non-standard language features you can enable
> is "go read this PDF research paper describing the theoretical
> motivation and technical underpinnings of this feature". Still, GHC
> doesn't cost money...

I'm not really sure what that has to do with what I was saying....

Jim

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