Their code explicitly depended on the wording of exception messages because they were using a dynamic language. Java is a typed language, where we can match on

Their code explicitly depended on the wording of exception messages because they were using a dynamic language. Java is a typed language, where we can match on exception types: if (ex instanceof NullPointerException) catch (NullPointerException ex) { It is therefore rare for Java programmers to match on exception messages (it would be a mistake).