For a long time, error messages made me uncomfortable.
Not angry.
Not dramatic.
Just uncomfortable.
Something would break.
Red text would appear.
And my instinct was always the same.
Skip it.
I would scroll past the message, look for a line number, copy something random and jump to Google.
Sometimes Copilot.
Sometimes Gemini.
Anywhere except the error message itself.
The error message was right there.
Trying to explain what went wrong.
But I treated it like background noise.
I didn’t trust it.
I didn’t trust myself to understand it either.
Learning to read error messages better wasn’t about becoming smarter.
It was about changing how I reacted when things broke.
That took time.
I Thought I Was Reading Errors. I Wasn’t.
Earlier in my career, I believed I read error messages.
Looking back, I was only skimming.
I searched for:
- A familiar word
- A file name I recognized
- A line number that felt actionable
Once I found one of those, I stopped reading.
The rest felt overwhelming or useless.
If I saw something like:
Cannot read property ‘map’ of undefined
My brain would immediately conclude:
“Okay, something is undefined.”
And that was it.
No follow-up questions.
No curiosity.
No pause.
I jumped straight to fixing without understanding.
Most of the time, that meant guessing.
Errors Felt Like Personal Failure
One big reason I avoided reading errors properly was emotional.
Errors felt personal.
They didn’t feel like system messages.
They felt like judgment.
Every error sounded like:
“You should have known better.”
So my goal wasn’t understanding.
My goal was escape.
Fix it fast.
Make the red text go away.
Move on.
That mindset made errors stressful instead of useful.
It was the opposite of the debugging habit I rely on now.
The First Real Shift
At some point, something small changed.
I stopped seeing errors as proof that I was bad at my job.
I started seeing them as reports.
An error message is not angry.
It’s not disappointed.
It’s not mocking you.
It’s just saying:
“I tried to do this. It didn’t work. Here’s why.”
Once I internalized that, my reaction softened.
Less panic.
Less rush.
More space to think.
And space is what you need to actually read.
Slowing Down Felt Wrong, But It Worked
The biggest improvement came from doing something that felt counterproductive.
I slowed down.
When an error appeared, I forced myself to:
- Read it from the top
- Read it word by word
- Not scroll immediately
Even when I didn’t understand it.
Especially when I didn’t understand it.
At first, this felt like wasting time.
But over time, patterns started appearing.
Certain phrases kept repeating:
undefinedis not a functionexpected X but received Ycannot read property
These stopped being scary.
They became familiar signals.
Not solutions.
Signals.
I Stopped Ignoring the First Line
One mistake I made for years was skipping the first line of the error.
I jumped straight to the stack trace.
Line numbers felt useful.
Messages felt vague.
But most of the time, the first line tells you the core issue.
Everything else is context.
Once I started respecting that first line, debugging became clearer.
Not easier.
Clearer.
And clarity matters more.
Learning What to Ignore
Some error messages are long.
Very long.
Frameworks add layers.
Build tools add noise.
Libraries stack on top of each other.
Early on, everything looks important.
Over time, I learned to ask simple questions:
- Where does this mention my code?
- Which file name do I recognize?
- Where does the error move from library code to something I wrote?
I didn’t learn this from a guide.
I learned it by fixing the same types of errors again and again.
Every fix taught me:
“This part mattered. That part didn’t.”
Slowly, my eyes learned where to rest.
Creating Errors on Purpose Helped More Than Tutorials
At some point, I started breaking things on purpose.
Not in production.
Not recklessly.
While learning.
I would:
- Remove a prop
- Pass the wrong value
- Call something that didn’t exist
Then I would read the error message carefully.
This removed pressure.
There was no deadline.
No frustration.
Just cause and effect.
“When I do this, the system says that.”
That feedback loop taught me more than most tutorials.
I Learned to Translate Errors Into Plain Language
Instead of accepting errors as-is, I started rephrasing them.
For example:
Cannot read property ‘length’ of undefined
Became:
I’m trying to access
.lengthon something that doesn’t exist yet.
That translation step mattered.
Once I could explain the error in my own words, the fix often became obvious.
Even when it didn’t, my searches improved.
Whether it was Google, Copilot, ChatGPT or Claude, I wasn’t pasting errors blindly anymore.
I was asking better questions.
More specific.
Less desperate.
Tools helped.
Google helped.
Copilot helped.
Claude helped.
But none of them worked until I slowed down enough to understand what the error was actually saying.
Errors Taught Me How JavaScript Actually Works
Reading error messages slowly changed how I understood JavaScript.
JavaScript is very honest when it fails.
It tells you:
- When something is undefined
- When something isn’t callable
- When types don’t match expectations
At first, these messages annoyed me.
Later, I realized they were explaining the language’s rules.
Not the rules I assumed.
The rules that actually exist.
That difference matters more than memorizing syntax.
Framework Errors Felt Impossible Until They Didn’t
React errors used to feel impossible.
Too long.
Too indirect.
Too abstract.
I would stare at them and feel stuck.
What helped was realizing this:
Framework errors often wrap simpler problems.
Once I stopped trying to understand the entire message, things improved.
I focused on:
- The first sentence
- The component name
- The line in my code
That was usually enough to move forward.
Understanding every word was never required.
Errors Didn’t Go Away. Fear Did.
At some point, something subtle changed.
Errors stopped triggering panic.
Not because I knew all the answers.
But because I trusted myself to figure them out.
Even unfamiliar errors felt manageable.
I didn’t need instant fixes.
I needed understanding.
Reading error messages properly gave me that.
What I’d Tell My Past Self
If I could talk to my earlier self, I’d say:
Slow down.
Read the message.
Don’t skip the boring parts.
Don’t assume you’re bad at this.
Errors are not interruptions.
They are explanations.
Sometimes messy.
Sometimes verbose.
Sometimes frustrating.
But still explanations.
Final Thought
Learning to read error messages better didn’t make me faster overnight.
It made me calmer.
More patient.
More curious.
More confident.
Errors didn’t disappear.
But fear did.
And that changed how I write code every single day.
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