October 6th, 2015

First, try reading the error message, episode 4: Even programmers see error messages without reading them

Raymond Chen
Raymond Chen

Same story, different details. It’s the same internal programmer’s tool which I have been calling Program Q. Many people have written scripts that help to manage your q tables.

I’m trying to fribble my q table, but the fribble script gives me the following error:

fribble: Error: Could not refresh counterbalances. Please manually run q refresh frib1 frib2 -r library

What does this mean, and what should I do?

Apparently, this programmer just froze up and stopped reading at the word “error”. The error message is two sentences long. The first sentence answers the first question. The second sentence answers the second question.

I can’t even explain this away as a TL;DR. How can two sentences, each of which answers a question you asked, count as TL?

Category
Old New Thing
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Author

Raymond Chen

Raymond has been involved in the evolution of Windows for more than 30 years. In 2003, he began a Web site known as The Old New Thing which has grown in popularity far beyond his wildest imagination, a development which still gives him the heebie-jeebies. The Web site spawned a book, coincidentally also titled The Old New Thing (Addison Wesley 2007). He occasionally appears on the Windows Dev Docs Twitter account to tell stories which convey no useful information.

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