Unexpected Error

This morning I wanted to quickly look up some information in a web application and was greeted with this message:

Unexpected Error The process did not complete. Details should follow. An internal error doesn’t allow to continue this process

That’s it. No contact information or any other way to report this issue. Calling the helpdesk does not help either because I don’t even know the name of this application as the URL just contains three letters “SMT” and - frankly - I don’t really care how that application is called.

But what really bothers me is the fact that the developer (and architect) of this system settled for unexpected errors to happen, instead of catching them and leading the user to a useful message where they could report the issue and get help.

Note to developers: Nobody blames you if there are bugs in your piece of software. But you haven’t done your job if there are any unexpected errors not handled as professionally as we expect the rest of your system to be.