A friend is getting into .Net -- what's the best thing to read??

'Farmer Jeb' on Thu, 15 Jun 2006 00:15:11 GMT, sez:

Ahhh, Googling the error message. I can't remember what I used to do in the dark days before the WWW. I think it had something to do with whatchamacallit... papery things... books. Anyway, here's my list of the different types of results from such a search:
1. Expert Sex Change: We know the answer and will clutter your Google results with this fact but you can't read it unless you register. Argggg!!!
2. Mailing list post: I'm getting error XYZ. Can anyone help?
2.1. Mailing list reply type 1: no replies
2.2. Mailing list reply type 2: I didn't read your message properly and I'm a f*ckwit so here's a solution that has nothing to do with error XYZ...

(The list goes on!)

'Eddie de Bear' on Thu, 15 Jun 2006 01:55:32 GMT, sez:

Hey, love the advice..
The only other thing I can add to that, look at the call stack for the exception.. It tells you exactly where the error is happening... If you can narrow down the exception to 1 line of code, your 90% of the way to fixing it..

'mike' on Thu, 15 Jun 2006 03:24:16 GMT, sez:

mike thinks your post is full o' good advices.

And achooly, he isn't kidding. The error messages -- at least, the yellow-white-red ones that ASP.NET throws -- actually do contain many good informations.

'lb' on Thu, 15 Jun 2006 03:46:53 GMT, sez:

>the yellow-white-red ones that ASP.NET throws"

we call this 'the yellow screen of death'. maybe others do too?

when people are first confronted with these things they feel bamboozled, sad, lost, out of touch, hopeless... well i did... but after a while the YSOD is like a friend from a distant land... always brimming with exciting news and gossip

'Paul' on Fri, 30 Jun 2006 11:47:40 GMT, sez:

And for jesus' sake, please actually capture the error. I have no idea how many times people have told me "Your code threw an error" and the only answer are:

"What was the error?" - "I dunno, I just clicked past it"

"What line was the error on" - "It was in your code"

"How did you generate the error" - "It just happened"

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