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I would never describe Linux as "robust". It seems everyone I know has seen it panic more than once, and shrugged it off not by fixing anything but by power-cyc

I would never describe Linux as "robust". It seems everyone I know has seen it panic more than once, and shrugged it off not by fixing anything but by power-cycling the machine and hoping it doesn't happen too often. This means on top of a database of tens of thousands of bugs, there have been countless catastrophic failures which have never even been diagnosed. We only use it because everything else is at least that embarrassingly terrible and probably even worse. Taking software seriously involves ensuring every failure is handled. Dropping them on the floor is almost never the right thing, which makes it crazy to have that quietly happen by default. Joel points out code without exceptions becomes very verbose and littered with local handling, but overlooks that it's so painful that most developers can't be relied on to actually do it.

seabrookmx 13y ago
I run quite a few linux boxes, and make them do lots of real work. Compared to other pieces of software, I find it quite reliable. This is especially true if you take into consideration the breadth of tasks and the performance requirements needed out of a monolithic kernel. I'm in no way saying its perfect though. > Taking software seriously involves ensuring every failure is handled > it's so painful that most developers can't be relied on to actually do it I agree with both of those points (as any decent developer would), but I don't believe exceptions remedy either of those issues. The architects behind Go, truely some of the best minds in computer science, did not include exceptions because of this.