[Tutor] Is there a convenient table of Python 3.4 exceptions?
Alan Gauld
alan.gauld at btinternet.com
Sat Oct 25 10:44:00 CEST 2014
On 25/10/14 03:14, boB Stepp wrote:
> In the programs I have been dabbling in at work, I am often
> "surprised" by the situations my users stumble into that I did not
> have sufficient imagination to consider up front.
That's always a problem. And just when you think you've seen everything
the users will astound you by thinking up another way to screw your
code. That's one reason for having specialist system test teams
completely divorced from the developers. Developers know how its
supposed to work so its very difficult for a developer to break their
own code. System testers exist to break code, they will not be happy
until they have found a way to make it crash or freeze. That's a good thing.
> As a user of software I have often wished that the error messages
> generated were understandable and help me to avoid the condition which
> triggered that message in the future.
Some people like to raise Python error messages to user level but that
can be dangerous. I've had users turn off their PC and call the help
desk and wait several hours for help because of a fairly innocuous
exception message that spooked them. That cost the business a lot of
down time. So translating any uncaught errors into logged messages and
displaying something more human friendly on the screen is a good thing
IMHO. But that doesn't mean you need to predict every possible
individual error or handle it, that's just not possible, especially
in a dynamic language like Python.
--
Alan G
Author of the Learn to Program web site
http://www.alan-g.me.uk/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/alangauldphotos
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