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    I've looked over some of the exception classes in the .NET Framework, and it turns out there are plenty of opportunities for adding this kind of information programmatically. So I guess the question resolves to "why don't they." But +1 for the whole "human-readable" thing. Commented Apr 13, 2015 at 16:18
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    I don't agree that exceptions shouldn't contain a human-readable component. At some level, you may want to create a log message regarding the exception. I'd argue that logging a stack trace to a user-readable log file is exposing implementation details that you don't want to expose, so the human readable message should be logged. When presented with the log file that contains the error, developers should have a starting point to begin their debugging and be able to force the exception to happen. The human-readable component should be appropriately detailed without giving away implementation. Commented Apr 13, 2015 at 16:20
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    so programmer's aren't human? Looking at my colleagues this confirms some suspicions I've had for some time... Commented Apr 13, 2015 at 16:22
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    Again, there's nothing wrong with letting the user see the entire stack trace, as long as the software is client-side. Every professional software project I've ever worked on, and most of the amateur ones as well, contained a logging system that would generate a full error dump when an unhandled exception was raised, including full stack traces of all currently-running threads in the process. And the user could (gasp, oh horror!) look at it any time he wanted, since that is necessary (not simply useful, but required) in order to send the error message back to us! What is wrong with that? Commented Apr 13, 2015 at 18:31
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    I'm also not convinced with respect to binary-only log files. Mainly because of my experience with systemd. Its special tool for viewing these logs is quite confusing and appears to have been designed by a committee of Shakespeare's monkeys. Consider that, for a web application, the first person to see your exception is often going to be the sysadmin, and he is going to want to determine if it's something he needs to fix (e.g. the disk ran out of space) or pass back to the developers. Commented Apr 14, 2015 at 4:52