New Chapter: Let it crash

content/books/things-i-learnt/_index.md

@@ -28,5 +28,6 @@ template = "section-contentless.html"
 		* [Future Thinking Is Future Trashing](future-trashing)
 		* [Don't Use Booleans As Parameters](boolean-parameters)
 		* [Beware of Interface Changes](interface-changes)
+		* [It's Better To Let The Application Crash Than Do Nothing](crash-it)
 * Community/Teams
 	* [A Language Is Much More Than A Language](languages-are-more)

content/books/things-i-learnt/crash-it/index.md

@@ -0,0 +1,39 @@
++++
+title = "Things I Learnt The Hard Way - It's Better To Let The Application Crash Than Do Nothing"
+date = 2019-06-24
+
+[taxonomies]
+tags = ["en-au", "books", "things i learnt", "exceptions", "error handling"]
++++
+
+Although that sounds weird, it's better to not add any error handling than
+silently capturing errors and doing nothing.
+
+<!-- more -->
+
+For example, a (sadly common) example of Java code:
+
+```java
+try {
+  something_that_can_raise_exception()
+} catch (Exception ex) {
+  System.out.println(ex);
+}
+```
+
+This does nothing to deal with the exception -- besides printing it, that is.
+
+The example may be a bit bad, 'cause Java forces capturing exceptions on
+functions that throw exceptions and it forces functions to mark themselves as
+throwing exceptions if there a `throw` in them.
+
+But Python doesn't have this restriction and people _still_ try to capture
+exceptions for doing absolutely nothing -- and, worse, just keep the execution
+going.
+
+If the language allows it, you should let the application crash due the lack
+of error handling -- as long as you don't have any idea on how to handle it.
+Then, when they crash, you can think of a way to deal with it, instead of
+silently capturing it and doing nothing.
+
+{{ chapters(prev_chapter_link="/books/things-i-learnt/interface-changes", prev_chapter_title="Beware of Interface Changes", next_chapter_link="/books/things-i-learnt/languages-are-more", next_chapter_title="A Language Is Much More Than A Language") }}

content/books/things-i-learnt/interface-changes/index.md

@@ -32,4 +32,4 @@ you can finally kill the original function.
 function as deprecated and _add a sleep at the start of the function_, in a
 way that people using the old function are forced to update.)
 
-{{ chapters(prev_chapter_link="/books/things-i-learnt/boolean-parameters", prev_chapter_title="Don't Use Booleans As Parameters", next_chapter_link="/books/things-i-learnt/languages-are-more", next_chapter_title="A Language Is Much More Than A Language") }}
+{{ chapters(prev_chapter_link="/books/things-i-learnt/boolean-parameters", prev_chapter_title="Don't Use Booleans As Parameters", next_chapter_link="/books/things-i-learnt/crash-it", next_chapter_title="It's Better To Let The Application Crash Than Do Nothing") }}

content/books/things-i-learnt/languages-are-more/index.md

@@ -39,4 +39,4 @@ surface of what the whole of a language encapsulates and if you ignore the
 other elements in it, you may find yourself with a cute language in a
 community that is always fighting and never going forward.
 
-{{ chapters(prev_chapter_link="/books/things-i-learnt/interface-changes", prev_chapter_title="Beware of Interface Changes") }}
+{{ chapters(prev_chapter_link="/books/things-i-learnt/crash-it", prev_chapter_title="It's Better To Let The Application Crash Than Do Nothing") }}