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It will never be as easy as in Python because Python uses unchecked exceptions. (Frankly, I hate error handling in Python.) I don't know Java or C++, so I can'

It will never be as easy as in Python because Python uses unchecked exceptions. (Frankly, I hate error handling in Python.) I don't know Java or C++, so I can't help you there. > I consider having to unwrap or try! on essentially every function call They aren't on every function call. Only on functions that can return errors. The type signatures will tell you which. > to be verbose. I don't. In fact, I love how errors are handled. It's explicit, concise and ergonomic. We'll just have to disagree, I guess.

saurik 12y ago
I also hate error "handling" in Python, but I thankfully long ago realized that what I want is error propagation and reporting", and almost all of my use cases for "handling" errors were mistakes: what I wanted was a mechanism similar to panic that could propagate rich error context (as opposed to just strings), and that is what unchecked exceptions are. Most of my Python code that tried to "handle" errors now gets removed and replaced with better semantics: the kind of failure semantics that one might expect to get from panic, but can't, as panic loses too much context to be useful for reporting (forcing developers to use case logic). Rust programs are littered with calls to unwrap and expansions of try! for the sole purpose of doing manual error propagation, which is both verbose in the code and slow at runtime (as the successful case must constantly produce and then check error results), just so the error can get to the top level somewhere and be reported to someone (which in turn drags a surprisingly large amount of your code into the domain of "functions that can return errors"). None of that boilerplate should be required: even with an insistence on the mechanism, it is such a clear case of boilerplate that a friend of mine finally ended up working on a compiler plug-in whose purpose was to jusy add calls to try! around anything that seemed to require those calls.
- burntsushi 12y ago
  I like explicit error handling. I don't want errors bubbling up automatically. As I said, we'll just have to disagree.
  - saurik 12y ago
    Clearly ;P. I just hope you realize that you sound a lot like the people working in languages like C or Java or Go that insist that adding abstraction and automation is bad as they want everything to be explicit and transparent :(.
    - burntsushi 12y ago
      That's absurd. I wrote the OP, and the entire article is about using abstraction to make error handling more convenient. Here's an excerpt from my post that describes my true feelings on the matter (because we don't all fit nice and neatly into pre-conceived buckets): > My advice boils down to this: use good judgment. There’s a reason why the words “never do X” or “Y is considered harmful” don’t appear in my writing. There are trade offs to all things, and it is up to you as the programmer to determine what is acceptable for your use cases. My goal is only to help you evaluate trade offs as accurately as possible.
      - saurik 12y ago
        Maybe this is going to be "way too Hacker News", but to me this is "bulb paradox": C developers could claim it is absurd to say their arguments for explicit and transparent logic are somehow against abstraction and automation because they, unlike their assembly brethren, opted for structured control flow and rigid function conventions, and Java developers can say the same about the way they abstracted explicit polymorphism. That doesn't change the form of the argument they are making about going even further. Having to litter code with unwrap and try! just because somewhere much lower an error is used and much higher an error is reported does not seem beneficial unless the alternative is to do it in a way that is even more manual and less safe, but that's not how it works in the languages I use on a daily basis. Yes: C and Go make dealing with errors so painful and dangerous that Rust is absolutely amazing in comparison... but I don't program in C or Go and I would hope we aren't using them as the benchmark when we have C++. I encourage you to read my example with type declaration that I wrote elsewhere in this thread. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9552612 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9552612

saurik 12y ago

I also hate error "handling" in Python, but I thankfully long ago realized that what I want is error propagation and reporting", and almost all of my use cases for "handling" errors were mistakes: what I wanted was a mechanism similar to panic that could propagate rich error context (as opposed to just strings), and that is what unchecked exceptions are. Most of my Python code that tried to "handle" errors now gets removed and replaced with better semantics: the kind of failure semantics that one might expect to get from panic, but can't, as panic loses too much context to be useful for reporting (forcing developers to use case logic). Rust programs are littered with calls to unwrap and expansions of try! for the sole purpose of doing manual error propagation, which is both verbose in the code and slow at runtime (as the successful case must constantly produce and then check error results), just so the error can get to the top level somewhere and be reported to someone (which in turn drags a surprisingly large amount of your code into the domain of "functions that can return errors"). None of that boilerplate should be required: even with an insistence on the mechanism, it is such a clear case of boilerplate that a friend of mine finally ended up working on a compiler plug-in whose purpose was to jusy add calls to try! around anything that seemed to require those calls.

burntsushi 12y ago
I like explicit error handling. I don't want errors bubbling up automatically. As I said, we'll just have to disagree.
- saurik 12y ago
  Clearly ;P. I just hope you realize that you sound a lot like the people working in languages like C or Java or Go that insist that adding abstraction and automation is bad as they want everything to be explicit and transparent :(.
  - burntsushi 12y ago
    That's absurd. I wrote the OP, and the entire article is about using abstraction to make error handling more convenient. Here's an excerpt from my post that describes my true feelings on the matter (because we don't all fit nice and neatly into pre-conceived buckets): > My advice boils down to this: use good judgment. There’s a reason why the words “never do X” or “Y is considered harmful” don’t appear in my writing. There are trade offs to all things, and it is up to you as the programmer to determine what is acceptable for your use cases. My goal is only to help you evaluate trade offs as accurately as possible.
    - saurik 12y ago
      Maybe this is going to be "way too Hacker News", but to me this is "bulb paradox": C developers could claim it is absurd to say their arguments for explicit and transparent logic are somehow against abstraction and automation because they, unlike their assembly brethren, opted for structured control flow and rigid function conventions, and Java developers can say the same about the way they abstracted explicit polymorphism. That doesn't change the form of the argument they are making about going even further. Having to litter code with unwrap and try! just because somewhere much lower an error is used and much higher an error is reported does not seem beneficial unless the alternative is to do it in a way that is even more manual and less safe, but that's not how it works in the languages I use on a daily basis. Yes: C and Go make dealing with errors so painful and dangerous that Rust is absolutely amazing in comparison... but I don't program in C or Go and I would hope we aren't using them as the benchmark when we have C++. I encourage you to read my example with type declaration that I wrote elsewhere in this thread. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9552612 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9552612