Feedback wanted: confusing/unhelpful error messages

The Scala 3 core maintainers are starting a new campaign to seek out confusing, annoying or unhelpful error/warning messages.

One way to make Scala friendlier to newcomers, and easier to learn, is to help the user when they make a mistake. Error messages and warnings should be there to help the user, not scare them away.

To help collect problematic errors, we have made a new issue template to fill in on the Scala 3 repository.

The template helps you to write the report, by asking what was so confusing/unhelpful about the message, and then gives the option for you to suggest what would make the error more helpful, actionable, etc.

The improvement may be anywhere from more explicit explanation of the source of error, to even adding a quick fix that can be applied automatically.

Please click here to open a new issue!

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This is great! On top of this, can I also add that everything is now in place for contributors and compiler maintainers to make use of actionable diagnostics. There has already been community members that have contributed some!

It’d be awesome that as we encourage people to report error messages that are confusing/unhelpful that we also encourage them report if they think it’s something the compiler could just provide a fix for it!

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