21 November 2007
On the Samurai Principle
Some blogs recently pondered on the Samurai Principle. It made me think, because I'm one of the many "guilty" of returning None/null rather than raising an exception. To me, it happens more often when working with Python rather than Java, because it's very natural to write "if something_not_found: return None". Also, abusing exceptions can end up polluting your code with dozens of nested try-catch/except, which kill readability and tend to be much worse than a simple "if (obj is None):".
This said, I agree that NullPointerExceptions are a royal pain, and "AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'something' " is equally bad to deal with. API programmers in particular should try hard to return this sort of stuff as little as possible.
I guess the bottom line is that in medium stat virtus, as it's often the case with these "absolute principles of programming"; at the end of the day, when we program we are applying science, not demonstrating it. And as much as we love them, samurai lost all their wars ;)
Labels: GeekDiary, java, python
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3 Comments:
At 26/11/07 12:43,
Cristian said…
Actually i hate Samurais AND Exceptions :)
At 9/12/07 02:55,
David Boddie said…
One of your own earlier entries about Partner Programmes references a Joel Spolsky article that also talks about this issue:
http://bakerstreetsystems.blogspot.com/2007/10/empowering-programs.html
However, that article was written back in 2003. It's funny how history repeats itself.
At 10/12/07 12:22,
GiacomoL said…
Eh, it's probably because the debate is still all but settled... Unfortunately, it's impossible to settle it in these "black or white" terms, when a mixed approach is clearly the way to go (as long as your APIs are documented with a big red blinking "CAN RETURN NONE" statement).
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