Google's Go

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

grauzone wrote:
> dsimcha wrote:
>> Multiple return values are a horrible substitute for exceptions, 
>> because they
>> require the programmer to explicitly check the return value.  (When's 
>> the last
>> time you checked the return value of printf, or even malloc?)  IMHO 
>> the best thing
>> about exceptions is that they provide a sane default for error 
>> handling:  If you
>> don't handle them then you've effectively asserted that they can't 
>> happen in your
>> situation.  If this "assertion" fails, then our program fails fast and 
>> with an
>> error message that massively narrows down where the problem is.  I 
>> flat-out refuse
>> to program in a language where the default is for errors to be ignored 
>> and I have
>> to constantly write explicit error-checking boilerplate even if I 
>> don't care about
>> handling the error.
> 
> Exception handling in D (or C++/Java for that matter) isn't that great 
> either. In D, you don't even know what exceptions a function may throw. 
> It's completely dynamic. You may even accidentally catch unknown 
> exceptions, because your catch-filter isn't "narrow" enough.
> 
> Java has checked exceptions, but they are misdesigned, get in the 
> programmers way, and generally suck. Feels almost like D copied the 
> standard Java feature by the letter, removing checked exceptions, and 
> call that an improvement.

For my money, D2 exceptions (as designed and described in TDPL) are 
better than all other exception frameworks, by a mile. This is mainly 
because D offers a practical methods of handling collateral exceptions 
(exceptions thrown during the stack unwinding caused by other exceptions).

> Also, let's have a look how exceptions improve the robustness of most 
> Java code:
> 
> try { something(); } catch (Exception e) { Logger.getLogger().log(e); }
> 
> I guess D programmers are just better than D programmers, which makes 
> this example out of place, of course. Or they just let it fall through, 
> until it gets catched by a similar catch-all statement.
> 
> Generally, exceptions as they are implemented in some popular languages 
> seem to give the impression that you don't need to care about error 
> handling. That isn't always true and probably only works in small 
> command line tools.

I agree! I'd put it even stronger.


Andrei