I hear you and it has been an issue years ago but gradually Erlang's maintainers have been making error messages (and return error values) better and more readable and at this point I can't remember when was the last time when an Erlang return value and stack trace have impeded me.

So you were correct some years ago but I am not seeing this nowadays. So yeah, valid criticism, at the same time this criticism has been mostly taken to heart and addressed as of today.