GeezerVison

From a partial scan I agree with 97% of removals.
Some might have value... like: assert.strictEqual(code, 1, 'exit code 1');
Would you wait a day or two before landing, I really want to review them all (It will be a shame to lose good information if it's in there)

(@Trott, maybe we could have a lint rule that forbids literals as messages if this PR is somewhat well-received?)

Sounds good, but maybe a little bit more lax, like if it's more than n characters long, or has at least 4 white space groups (meaning 5 words), or has some keywords like should, it might be good as well.
[edit] meanwhile it should be communicated to Collaborators not to approve these sort of unhelpful messages, as they actually hide the default which is better.

Some might have value... like: assert.strictEqual(code, 1, 'exit code 1');

I wouldn’t agree. exit code 1 is an unhelpful error message, because it just states the expected result; but that I can easily look up by looking at where the stack trace points. Providing the actual exit code is a lot more helpful.

Would you wait a day or two before landing, I really want to review them all (It will be a shame to lose good information if it's in there)

Sure, this isn’t urgent.

ping @refack ... have you had a chance to review yet?

halfway there.

Rebased. @refack I think the “a day or two before landing” have passed by now, are you okay with reviewing this later and fixing up anything you’d like to see addressed yourself?

CI: https://ci.nodejs.org/job/node-test-commit/10331/

Rebased. @refack I think the “a day or two before landing” have passed by now, are you okay with reviewing this later and fixing up anything you’d like to see addressed yourself?

CI: https://ci.nodejs.org/job/node-test-commit/10331/

Yep.

Landed in 1dc3272