Based on my [limited] understanding, better error messages is one of the goals of Perl 6 and something the Racket folks put a lot of thought behind when creating the Student Language series. At the other end of the spectrum are JVM languages that fail spectacular with references to Java classes that the program's author never heard of.
Databases are another example of this, with Postgres actually giving useful hints, whereas Oracle just gives you cryptic numbered messages. If I never have to read "missing right parenthesis" again…
Heh, a long time ago I wrote a script using BeautifulSoup which given an ORA-XXX would return a detailed explanation. Amazingly, it still works: https://gist.github.com/bluetech/f9aa4ede5a25c765c6e6 (don't hold me to the code though :)
