As a user I'd like to know more about error handling in languages with exceptions

[andrew-howden]

Cover things like:

• When to throw an exception (based on philosophic of software design, try to make error behavior reasonable and exception unnecessary. Without that, logical errors where program cannot proceed)

Catching exceptions

• Failure boundaries
• Never as message passing

Feedback Loops

• Justify the surfacing of an error in commit messages, with a note about where it will be caught.

I'd expect this documentation to be in the form of an article.

—

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmSAYlu0NcY&feature=youtu.be

[andrew-howden]

Hmm. How does this jive with cases in which error messages explicitly messages? That is, they're a response (or are they?)

HTTP has a set of status codes that indicate a 'non-normal' response. Is that a message or an error? Maybe we can say something like "messages are fin to generate at failure boundaries"?

Additionally, want to think about the notion that the client is responsible for handling the error in all cases; this applies particularly with networked systems.

The server can try to be as "error free" as possible, but a better property for the aggregate health o the system is "error clear". The client can then implement the handling where it has much, much more knowledge about the business context of such an error, such as:

• Should we surface it to the user
• Should we retry it
• How often should we retry it
• Is it a load bearing request
• Does this system display a pattern of unhealthy behavior

[andrew-howden]

need to think about error handling in event driven systems; command queue event handlers and so fourth.

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