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Ignoring (serious) errors to keep the program alive?

Asked 2010-04-26T16:40:37.673
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One of the main things I wanted to achieve in my experimental programming language was: When errors occur (Syntax, Name, Type, etc.) keep the program running, no matter how serious or devastating it is. I know that this is probably very bad, but I just wanted something that doesn't kill itself on every error - I find it interesting what happens when a serious error occurs but the program continues.

  • Does this "paradigm" have a name? I mean expect for
  • How bad is it to do the above?
  • Are there programs in use out there that just follow: "Hey, this is a fatal, unexpected error - but you know what? I don't care!"?
design-patterns error-handling interpreter
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I don't know about a name.

How bad is it? I don't know; what are you using it for? Usually, it's better to have a crash than a silent error. Crashes are obvious, and can usually be corrected, but silent errors are likely to be unnoticed, and so it doesn't matter how easy they are to correct.

There are situations in which this may be the right thing to do. I've read of a Navy fire control computer with "battle bars" that disabled the exception facilities, on the grounds that as long as it was running it might be giving out good information, while if it isn't running you know very well it isn't. In battle, it's frequently the case that doing nothing is bad, even if you can't do something particularly useful.

answered 2010-04-26T16:48:25.803

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