When API Documentation Is So Bad that It’s Good, Part 2

The following list presents our potential error codes:

Error Code	Error Message	Description
7734	Something Definitely Happened	…but we’re not exactly sure what.
1334637	Not This Time	It failed? Try again. Did it work? Okay, good. What happened? You’ll never know.
3704558	Success with Errors	Meaning that we did what you wanted…but then something bad happened, also. Like the database was erased. Or something.
450087734	No	Just…no, man. No way. No.
580083351	Invalid Parameter	Some of your data was bad…What? You want us to tell you which parameter had the bad data? I’m not your damn slave. You figure it out, you pushy asshole.
580087734	Deprecated Method	This method doesn’t work anymore because we’ve disabled it. We could have forwarded your request to its replacement, in order to be backward compatible…but we didn’t. Why? Because we hate you.
5800808537	Multidimensional Error	So, basically, take this error code and pass it (along with your UserID) to the GetSpecialErrorCd method. Now, take the result of that method call and multiply it by your UserID to get the resulting product…which is how much you’re gonna need to pay us in order to help you figure this one out.

Peter Bolton is the author of Blowing the Bridge: A Software Story and has also been known to be a grumpy bastard on occasion.

I Hate the Sounds around Me