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If I am in the business of writing robust code; then "assuming all functions can throw" means at the very least forcing every function call to be surrounded by

If I am in the business of writing robust code; then "assuming all functions can throw" means at the very least forcing every function call to be surrounded by a try/catch block? It almost always make sense to handle an error locally if you can; for example if I want to retry the operation (let's say I'm writing a distributed database client), it may make sense for me to retry another node rather than unwinding to the application level that has now lost all context. >A function that has no possibility of error is so uninteresting that focusing on that is the wrong thing. I spend a lot of time debugging errors in code that has 0% chance of failing. It tends to involve a lot of matrix math. This isn't something you can say is universally true especially given all the hype around AI now.

quietbritishjim 4y ago
> It almost always make sense to handle an error locally if you can This is highly presumptuous. I have written many programs that did not need to handle errors locally, and so exception handlers were only at the very top level (or, actually, just below the top-level usually - but the point is that there were generally few and I had flexibility to decide where to put them). Perhaps you and I write very different applications. But the fact remains that the "almost always" in your statement doesn't hold. Alternatively line of reasoning: if this was always true then there would be little point to Rust's ? as it would be so rarely used.
- azov 4y ago
  > It almost always make sense to handle an error locally if you can Yes, but “if you can” does a lot of heavy lifting here. In most cases you can’t, and this is when Rust’s ? is used.
wvenable 4y ago
> If I am in the business of writing robust code; then "assuming all functions can throw" means at the very least forcing every function call to be surrounded by a try/catch block? No, absolutely not! You only care about errors where you can retry/ignore or log and terminate so you only have try/catch in those areas. So maybe one or two.

quietbritishjim 4y ago

> It almost always make sense to handle an error locally if you can This is highly presumptuous. I have written many programs that did not need to handle errors locally, and so exception handlers were only at the very top level (or, actually, just below the top-level usually - but the point is that there were generally few and I had flexibility to decide where to put them). Perhaps you and I write very different applications. But the fact remains that the "almost always" in your statement doesn't hold. Alternatively line of reasoning: if this was always true then there would be little point to Rust's ? as it would be so rarely used.

azov 4y ago
> It almost always make sense to handle an error locally if you can Yes, but “if you can” does a lot of heavy lifting here. In most cases you can’t, and this is when Rust’s ? is used.

wvenable 4y ago

> If I am in the business of writing robust code; then "assuming all functions can throw" means at the very least forcing every function call to be surrounded by a try/catch block? No, absolutely not! You only care about errors where you can retry/ignore or log and terminate so you only have try/catch in those areas. So maybe one or two.