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The issue with all exceptions, and error handling in general, is that only very rarely is there actually recourse for an error. For instance, in an HTTP request

by rcme 3y ago

The issue with all exceptions, and error handling in general, is that only very rarely is there actually recourse for an error. For instance, in an HTTP request handler, the vast majority of errors will end up as something like a 500. Checked exceptions are annoying because they make you explicitly handle an error when you likely already have a handler in place to handle all exceptions, checked or otherwise.

computerdork 3y ago
To me, you kind of hit both the pros and cons of checked exceptions. It makes the calling code have to deal with an important error case. This is actually super useful for very important error situations (for instance, let's say you're writing some type of file-processing class, and the class was unable to open the file for some reason, it might be a good situation to throw a checked exception as this can probably happen reasonably often). To me, the difficulty with exceptions is when writing a method that needs to throw an exception is deciding whether it should throw one that is actually checked. In fact, read a few of years ago most exceptions should actually be unchecked, but at least then, this was still greatly up for debate. ... as I type this, am realizing having the option of unchecked and checked exceptions is nice in that they reduce the amount error code you have to write. Because by throwing unchecked exceptions, this is error handling that all the entire calling code-chain doesn't need to deal with. The obvious situations are system errors like out of memory errors, missing resources... but also those programmatic errors that are unexpected, like array out of bounds, ClassCastException. Also, the calling chain then has the option to handle it if it's needed. For instance, if you're writing a low-level messaging queue that needs to report system errors (btw, this was a real situation that happened to me). Just my two cents.
inglor 3y ago
Exactly, the boilerplate overhead isn't worth it when 95% of times you don't have anything meaningful to do with the exception but let it propagate.

by rcme 3y ago

computerdork 3y ago

To me, you kind of hit both the pros and cons of checked exceptions. It makes the calling code have to deal with an important error case. This is actually super useful for very important error situations (for instance, let's say you're writing some type of file-processing class, and the class was unable to open the file for some reason, it might be a good situation to throw a checked exception as this can probably happen reasonably often). To me, the difficulty with exceptions is when writing a method that needs to throw an exception is deciding whether it should throw one that is actually checked. In fact, read a few of years ago most exceptions should actually be unchecked, but at least then, this was still greatly up for debate. ... as I type this, am realizing having the option of unchecked and checked exceptions is nice in that they reduce the amount error code you have to write. Because by throwing unchecked exceptions, this is error handling that all the entire calling code-chain doesn't need to deal with. The obvious situations are system errors like out of memory errors, missing resources... but also those programmatic errors that are unexpected, like array out of bounds, ClassCastException. Also, the calling chain then has the option to handle it if it's needed. For instance, if you're writing a low-level messaging queue that needs to report system errors (btw, this was a real situation that happened to me). Just my two cents.

inglor 3y ago

Exactly, the boilerplate overhead isn't worth it when 95% of times you don't have anything meaningful to do with the exception but let it propagate.