Re: Exception Misconceptions: Exceptions are better than return values

On Dec 19, 3:37 am, "dragan" <spambus...@prodigy.net> wrote:


:-)

Teaching takes time. Just because some unknown beginner
expresses an opinion doesn't mean that it represents the
concensus of the experts.

There are, clearly, a number of programmers who think that
exceptions solve all problems. (There are also some who think
just the opposite.) Whether any of these can be counted among
the "experts" is another question. Historically, there are
trends, and they tend to swing: when exceptions first became
available (in major languages), there was a very strong swing
toward them, as exemplified in Java (which was initially defined
about that time). As time goes on, and we acquire experience
with the technique, the overshoot is amortized, and we tend to
oscilate to a more measured position. Back in the mid 1990's, I
was one of the few in the anti-exception camp (along with Herb
Sutter!), and had some more or less heated discussions with
people like Dave Abrahams, who strongly favored them. Today,
Dave and I have very similar positions, varying only in details
(and even more so, I think, in the way we expression them): he
definitely realizes that there are times when return codes (or
even other solutions, like that used in iostream or by IEEE
floating point) are appropriate, and I find exceptions very
useful in specific cases, and certainly wouldn't reject them out
of hand. I would guess that today, there is a consensus among
the experts, more or less around Dave's or my position.

--
James Kanze