Re: Lightweight alternative to Reference

[Paul J. Lucas]

On Nov 29, 2007, at 4:52 PM, Tim Peierls wrote:

Abstractly, though, would you rather see ReferenceBuilderException  
checked or unchecked in the following:

  try {
      Reference ref =  
ReferenceBuilder.appendBar("myBar").appendFoo("myFoo");
      // do something with ref
  } catch (ReferenceBuilderException e) {
      // myBad: foo must come before bar
      // clean up
      // ? throw e;
  }

Programmer was wrong -- this should be unchecked, right?

How do you know the programmer was wrong?  How does the implementor of  
ReferenceBuilder know whether the data was supplied by the programmer  
or the user of the program?  If the latter, it's the user who is wrong  
in which case the programmer must deal with that.  Therefore: checked  
exception.

In general, IMHO, you've got to have a really, really good reason to  
make an exception unchecked.  "Because it's easier" isn't a good reason.

- Paul