The Case for Rethinking Try/Catch in Your Code

Try/catch blocks and throwing errors have become standard in many coding practices. However, what if you could eliminate these mechanisms from your day-to-day development? Let’s explore why you might not need them as much as you think and how to handle errors more effectively.

Why Use Try/Catch Sparingly?

The main idea is that try/catch should be reserved for critical exceptions that might truly crash your application — situations like a database disconnect, no internet access, or server overload. These are serious issues where failure is inevitable, and that’s when try/catch can be valuable.

But many developers misuse try/catch, throwing errors for issues like validation failures or nonexistent users — cases that can be handled in more controlled ways.

Understanding Errors vs. Exceptions

It’s essential to differentiate between errors and exceptions.

Exceptions: These represent unexpected situations that could "break" your app — such as unavailable disk space or memory overload. These issues deserve a try/catch.

Errors: These are more predictable scenarios, like invalid input, unauthorized access, or missing users. Instead of throwing an error for these, you can simply return an object detailing the issue and handle it in the controller layer.

Controlled Errors: A Healthier Approach

For issues like invalid user input or failed validations, it's healthier to handle them as controlled errors rather than throwing exceptions. Returning an error object allows your presentation layer (e.g., the controller) to manage the response without needing the heavy mechanics of exception handling.

Example:

function validateUser(user) {
  if (!user) {
    return { error: 'User does not exist' };  // Return a controlled error
  }
  return { success: true };
}

Benefits of This Approach

Clarity in Monitoring: Tools that observe system exceptions will only flag critical, unexpected errors. This ensures that error logs are clean, focusing on significant issues rather than validations or minor user problems.

Improved Code Maintenance: With fewer exceptions being thrown, you can better understand the true root causes of system failures and avoid noise in your monitoring systems.

Let It Crash: Embracing the concept of "let it crash" means accepting that some system-level failures are unavoidable. Instead of obsessively catching every possible issue, focus on resolving the root causes for critical exceptions.

Let It Crash: The Real Power of Exceptions

In scenarios where something truly breaks (e.g., a third-party API is offline), letting it crash is a valid strategy. Monitoring systems can alert you of these crashes, and your app can gracefully restart or fallback on solutions rather than trying to patch every possible problem with a try/catch.

Conclusion: Fewer Try/Catch, More Control

Reevaluating the use of try/catch and error handling in your code can improve application performance and maintainability. Save try/catch for catastrophic issues and use error objects for controlled, predictable errors. This approach ensures a healthier system, better monitoring, and clearer error logs.