Program logic bugs vs input/environmental errors

[Sean Kelly via Digitalmars-d]

On Sunday, 28 September 2014 at 20:58:20 UTC, H. S. Teoh via 
Digitalmars-d wrote:
>
> That's why I said, an uncaught exception is a BUG. The only  
> place where
> user-readable messages can be output is in a catch block where  
> you
> actually have the chance to localize the error string. But if  
> no catch
> block catches it, then by definition it's a bug, and you might  
> as while
> print some useful info with it that your users can send back to 
>  you,
> rather than unhelpful bug reports of the form "the program 
> crashed with
> error message 'internal error'".

Pretty much every system should generate a localized error 
message for the user and a detailed log of the problem for the 
programmer.  Ideally, the user message will indicate how to 
provide the detailed information to the developer so the problem 
can be fixed.

The one case where uncaught exceptions aren't really a bug is 
with programs that aren't being used outside the group that 
developed them.  In these cases, the default behavior is pretty 
much exactly what's desired--a message, file/line info, and a 
stack trace.  Which is why it's there.  The vast bulk of today's 
shipping code doesn't run from the command line anyway, so the 
default exception handler should be practically irrelevant.