Now What? A Workshop on Error Handling

I finally have time to flesh out ideas for lessons that I’ve wanted for years. However, if I can’t find a way to send them back to 2006, there’s no point writing them: very few people read long-form tutorials about software these days. I’d still be interested in comments, though—figuring out what I would teach always helps me learn. Overview Topic: Error handling. Audience: Senior undergraduates who are comfortable writing programs in Python and JavaScript that are hundred of lines long, know how to raise and catch exceptions, and are familiar with SQL, C, and the Unix shell, but have no experience building production-robust programs. Format: seven 45-minute lessons with exercises. 1) What Can Go Wrong Taxonomy of errors Logic errors: bugs in the program itself Runtime errors: null dereference, division by zero, index out of bounds External errors: file not found, network timeout, database constraint violation Human errors: bad input, misconfiguration, wrong file format Environmental…