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Why is the software world full of status codes?

Why did programmers ever start using status codes? I mean, I guess I could imagine this might be useful back in the days when a text string was an expensive resource. WAYYY back then. But even after we had megabytes of memory to work with, we continued to use them. What possible advantage could there be for obfuscating the meaning of an error message or status message behind a status code?

Solution

  • It's easy to provide different translations of a status code. Having to look up a string to find the translation in another language is a little silly.

    Besides, status codes are often used in code and typing:

    var result = OpenFile(...);
if (result == "File not fond") {
    ...
}

    Cannot be detected as a mistake by the compiler, where as,

    var result = OpenFile(...);
if (result == FILE_NOT_FOND) {
    ...
}

    Will be.