RahulRachhoya Error Handling
Principles
- Never swallow errors — empty catch blocks are bugs
- Never expose internals in error messages — no stack traces to users
- Fail fast — validate inputs early, crash on invalid state
- Handle errors at the right level — don't catch what you can't handle
Patterns
- Return typed results — Result/Option types instead of exceptions for expected failures
- Use exceptions for exceptional cases — not for control flow
- Wrap external errors — translate third-party errors into your domain
- Add context — include what you were doing when the error occurred
- Graceful degradation — if a non-critical feature fails, the app should still work
Checklist
- Every public function documents what errors it can produce
- Every catch block either handles, wraps with context, or re-raises
- External API calls have timeout and retry logic
- User-facing errors don't leak implementation details
- Errors are logged with enough context to debug
- Null/None checks are explicit, not implicit