Comparing Exceptions and Errors

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad]

On Monday, 6 June 2022 at 16:15:19 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad wrote:
> On Monday, 6 June 2022 at 15:54:16 UTC, Steven Schveighoffer 
> wrote:
>> If it's an expected part of the sorting algorithm that it *may 
>> fail to sort*, then that's not an Error, that's an Exception.
>
> No, it is not expected. Let me rewrite my answer to Sebastiaan 
> to fit with the sort scenario:

Let me sketch up another scenario. Let's say I am making an 
online game and I need early feedback from beta-testers. So I run 
my beta-service with lots of asserts and logging, when actors 
fail I discard them and relaunch them.

If the server went down on the first assert I wouldn't be able to 
test my server at all, because there would be no users willing to 
participate in a betatest where the server goes down every 20 
seconds! That is a very bad high risk-factor, that totally 
dominates this use scenario.

An engineer has to fill words such as «reliability», «utility», 
«probability» and «risk» with meaning that match the use scenario 
and make deliberate choices (cost-benefit-risk considerations). 
That includes choosing an actor model, and each actor has to 
prevent failure from affecting other actors. (by definition of 
«actor»).