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New Chapter: Let it crash

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Julio Biason 6 years ago
parent
commit
a1c22718b5
  1. 1
      content/books/things-i-learnt/_index.md
  2. 39
      content/books/things-i-learnt/crash-it/index.md
  3. 2
      content/books/things-i-learnt/interface-changes/index.md
  4. 2
      content/books/things-i-learnt/languages-are-more/index.md

1
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)

39
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") }}

2
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") }}

2
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") }}

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