system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
Eli5: Why do Operating System messages give useless (to most) error codes instead of simple explanations of what went wrong?

Example: Windows Update was failing. A string of numbers was the error. Turned out to be a simple matter of the system time being off. Why can't they just SAY "Check system time"?
gpt
There are thousands of error codes in the systems and the OS is translated in many languages..

* It's cheaper to use codes because you can keep adding them all over and not have to send them for translation
* although some error codes have a common cause, others can because caused for various reasons and thus the explanations would be really long.
* numbers are also easier to pass up through the system if something low level failed.