[Rock-dev] On ignoring exceptions ...

[Sylvain Joyeux]

This is a general programming issue

Catching an exception to ignore it is NOT something that should be done 
lightly. It is a very important act which is hidden behind the fact that 
it takes only (around) two lines of code to do. Why is it so important: 
because ignoring errors, when not done at the right place, can lead to 
'silent' problems that hit a lot later. Week-long debugging sessions, 
here we are !

This is actually why I strongly prefer exceptions over all other forms 
of error representation and handling: because they cannot be ignored _by 
default_. One has to catch them explicitly.

A fact of the programmer's life is that it sometimes makes sense. Fair 
enough. Now, because it is such an important act (am I stressing that 
enough ?), please HEAVILY describe the rationale of this act in the 
commit that pushes it to the mainline code. Don't be shy. If you don't 
have enough arguments, it is probably that you should not ignore the 
error in the first place.

Thank you in advance for reducing the length of everyone's debugging 
sessions
-- 
Sylvain Joyeux (Dr.Ing.)
Space & Security Robotics

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