On 2/20/06, Mikhail Loenko <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Well seems like we all agree with the general approach.
Yes. Agree. > > But... > > :) > > I do not agree with the specific case you describe: NPE vs. IAE. > > I can imagine a programmer who does not read the spec, who > does not want to check for null, who just makes 'catch NPE' somewhere Mikhail, I definitely can imagine the same story. I only want to have such application first. Then we will be able to judge and decide what to do. Before that no need to deviate from spec (of cource, excepting the cases when spec itself contains bugs as in my example with GrayFilter when required exception is missed from spec). In your example, such 'professional' developer most likely catches just Exception rather then the particular one :-) > > And his app would work well on RI and fail with uncaught IAE on Harmony > if we follow the spec. So, what is the reason in this very specific case > to firmly follow the spec? Because NPE (IMHO) is not well-defined way to inform the developer something is wrong with his/her code. It just shows 'something inside implementation' fails (excluding cases when NPE contains proper message and is thrown intentively). In opposite, IAE always shows programmer called the method with wrong input values. All is about better notation only. In case existing program specified percentage outside the reasonable range, for instance, and worked anyway it may be even better to clearly inform the developer something is wrong with the program. Because in reality there were no garantee that such incorrect code worked properly on Sun's impl: just a play of chance. Of course we should not add more exceptions than exist in code/spec (at least for now), but try to use 'proper' exceptions with better notation clear for the developers. I propose to continue this discussion when we have real examples, i.e. real applications failed because of such differences or particular methods which can potentially fail applications... Otherwise the discussion is quite abstract... Just IMHO. -- Anton Avtamonov, Intel Middleware Products Division
