langreiter.com plain, simple: 2007-03-08-erlErr

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2007-03-08-erlErr

CREATED BY chris • LAST EDITED BY chris 6562 days AGO

Joe Armstrong in Programming Erlang: "Handling errors in Erlang is very different from handling errors in all other programming languages [...]. One of the most important rules we'll learn is not to program defensively. The idea of defensive programming—checking all arguments to a function—is alien to Erlang. So much so that we say that if the arguments to a function are incorrect then you should just let your program crash."

"This approach will seem very strange at first, but don't worry. The benefits are worth the effort. To start with, your programs will be a lot shorter. Sometimes as much as 30% of a conventional program can be devoted to defensive testing of function arguments—there is no such code in an Erlang program. Secondly writing the error correction code will force you to think about how to repair a broken system, rather than worrying about how it broke. The error recovery code can be triggered in ways and circumstances that you had never imagined and is the basis for writing highly reliable programs."