yuchi-chang Fail Loud
A swallowed error is a bug with a delay timer. Code that hides failure looks robust in review and detonates in production months later, far from the cause.
Forbidden reflexes
- Empty catch blocks, or catch-log-continue when the caller can't proceed correctly anyway.
|| defaultValue/?? fallbackthat masks a failed operation instead of handling a legitimately absent value.- Catching broad exception types just to keep things running.
- Retries without a limit, or whose eventual failure is silent.
- Returning null / empty collections on internal error so downstream code limps along with wrong data.
The rule
Every fallback is a product decision, not a defensive reflex. Before writing one, answer: "Is the system actually correct when this branch executes?"
- Yes (missing config has a documented default; an optional feature degrades) → fine. Name the decision:
DEFAULT_TIMEOUT_S = 30, not an inline|| 30. - No (data is now wrong, state may be corrupt, the user sees stale results) → don't catch it here. Let it propagate to a layer that can genuinely handle it, and fail with a message naming what broke and which input caused it.
Loud vs graceful
- Loud: internal invariants, programmer errors, impossible states, dev/test environments. Crash early, close to the cause — that's what makes the bug findable.
- Graceful: validated user input, external services you don't control, network edges. Handle explicitly, log with context, and surface the degradation to the caller — don't pretend it succeeded.
Smell test
If deleting the try/catch would make the bug easier to find, the try/catch is the bug.