Bad Programming Practices 101: Become a Better Coder by Learning How (Not) to Program

© Karl Beecher 2018

Karl BeecherBad Programming Practices 101https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-3411-2_7

7. Error Handling

Karl Beecher¹ 

(1)

Berlin, Germany

 

Objectives

In this chapter, you’ll learn:

• Typical error-handling techniques and how to ignore them

• How to suppress errors

• How to dodge responsibility for handling errors altogether

• How to make error-handling as messy an affair as possible

Prerequisites

Before reading this chapter, it will help if you’re familiar with:

• Assertions

• Exceptions, including some of the most common exception types in Java (e.g., NullPointerException, IOException)

• Stack traces

Introduction

Any man can make mistakes, but only a fool persists in his error.

—Cicero

As if you couldn’t guess, making a mess of error-handling is a great ...