On 08/10/13 06:45, Brion Vibber wrote: > Out of curiosity, what's an actual example of code where the execution flow > of exceptions is significantly more surprising than the execution flow of a > billion manual checks to avoid "Fatal error: Call to a member function > foo() on a non-object"? > > I've heard the vague claim that exceptions are confusing for years, but for > the life of me I've never seen exception-handling code that looked more > complex or confusing than code riddled with checks for magic return values.
I don't think exceptions are confusing. The sole difference between exceptions and error returns is their default handling -- exceptions unwind the stack and show an error to the user, whereas error returns do nothing. Sometimes it is a choice between exception and a fatal error, but more often, it is a choice between an exception and some subtle context-dependent malfunction. In many cases, ignoring the error is not exactly correct, but it is less damaging than allowing the exception to terminate the whole request so that it is shown to the user. Whether you prefer a subtle failure or an epic failure is mostly a matter of personal preference. The designers of PHP have their feet firmly in the "subtle failure" camp, and this presumably influences the developers who work with the language. Personally, I am inclined towards tolerance -- I think developers are most happy and productive when they are allowed to choose which approach they will take to this sort of problem. Of course, that doesn't stop us from offering advice. -- Tim Starling _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l@lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
