The Right Approach to Exceptions

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

On 2/20/12 6:51 PM, H. S. Teoh wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 20, 2012 at 06:19:32PM -0600, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>> On 2/20/12 5:46 PM, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> [...]
>>> You've suggested adding "Variant[string] info" to Exception for the
>>> sake of i18n. I think that's what he's referring to. You *could*
>>> argue that's not technically i18n, but so far i18n seems to be the
>>> only real use-case for it (although even that much has been disputed
>>> in light of reflection).
>>
>> All formatting and rendering of the exception information is helped.
>> And I think that's great because that's the most common activity one
>> would do with exceptions.
> [...]
>
> Then, obviously, different development environments are leading to
> vastly different conclusions, because I can't for the life of me imagine
> that the most common activity you would do with an exception is to print
> it.

Different strokes for different folks I'd say. I think I could claim a 
little authority on diversity. I've worked on an extremely diverse range 
of applications; in fact I've made a point to acquire broad specialization.

In virtually all systems I've worked on, rendering meaningful error 
messages out of exception information has been a major concern, and in 
most of them the problem has been poorly addressed. It is very exciting 
to have an opportunity to improve on the state of affairs.


Andrei