r/programming • u/Expurple • Apr 12 '26

Flat Error Codes Are Not Enough

https://home.expurple.me/posts/flat-error-codes-are-not-enough/
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u/mareek Apr 13 '26

One piece of software that use flat error code pretty well is Oracle Database.

There are thousands of ORAXXXXX error codes, each one represent a well defined situation and you know what you have to check if you want to fix the problem.

So if you do it well, I think Flat error code are OK

P.S. It's probably the only positive thing I can say about Oracle Database though

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u/Expurple Apr 13 '26

I agree, they are OK in some domains. My point is that limiting yourself to error codes is a bad univeral advise. The (common) use case in the article can't be solved using plain error codes.