Few months ago I've written a rant about OpenGL error handling. The bad news is that its debug capabilities haven't improved much since. The good news is that now I know the history behind this completly insane interface.
In late '70, there was a computer called TRS-80 (from Wikipedia):
Level I Basic was based on Li-Chen Wang's free Tiny BASIC, additional functions added by Radio Shack.[8] It achieved a measure of noteworthiness due in large part to its outstanding manual,[5] written by David Lien, which presented lessons on programming with text and humorous graphics, making the subjects very easy to understand. It had only two string variables (A$ and B$), 26 numeric variables (A - Z) and one array, A(). Code for functions like SIN(), COS() and TAN() was not included in ROM but printed at the end of the book. The only error messages were: "WHAT?" for syntax errors, "HOW?" for arithmetic errors such as division by zero, and "SORRY" for out of memory errors.
Rings a bell?
