Developing Programmers .com

I’ve been plugging some of Joel Spolsky’s articles about coding recently because he has a fair bit of experience and his advice, although not suited to every situation, is generally good and deserving of serious consideration.

I’ve pointed out articles from Joel on Software such as “Making Wrong Code Look Wrong“, and the points Joel makes are excellent…

Recently I stumbled on this web page by Kristian Dupont Knudsen which tackles several things Joel has said head on and suggests people shouldn’t follow this advice. He then makes a case for each point, saying why he thinks the advice is flawed.

It’s important not to read this as black and white. It might superficially look like “Joel says never use exceptions but Kristian says always use them”. In practice there’s middle ground: there are situations where exceptions help and situations where they hinder, and it helps to beware of both extremes. It’s also good that there’s a variety of opinions on where the line is drawn. There should be debate on such things because otherwise people are coding purely out of habit rather than thinking about what they’re doing and why.

Anyway, go check out Kristian’s article. I don’t agree with some of the extremes he presents but they do round out other views with counter-examples.