Never Allow Silent Errors

In the fast-paced and ever-evolving world of startup engineering, dealing with code errors is an inevitable part of the job. The Zen of Python, a collection of software principles, provides valuable wisdom for handling these errors: "Errors should never pass silently." In this blog post, we'll delve into this principle and discuss why it's so crucial for startups, particularly those in the early stages.

Understanding Silent Errors

Silent errors occur when exceptions or problems arise in the code, but instead of throwing an error, the system bypasses it, resulting in faulty outputs or even system failures. Consider these scenarios:

1. Your code logic expects a single element in an array, but the array is empty. Do you throw an exception, or do you return null?
2. You're reading from a file, but an error arises while accessing it. Do you halt the process, or do you return an empty string?

In both instances, avoiding throwing an exception might seem like a way to prevent an outage. However, the problem still exists - it's merely shifted elsewhere. Instead of a clear exception pointing to the root of the problem, you now face a cryptic null exception or unexpected system behavior. This makes troubleshooting the issue far more time-consuming and challenging.

The Case for Throwing/Failing Over Silent Errors

When an exception is bypassed or an error occurs silently, the underlying issue remains unaddressed. This can result in an outage that has already technically happened but has not yet manifested in a visible way. In contrast, when you throw an exception, you're immediately alerted to a problem that you can then tackle. This clear visibility of issues simplifies the troubleshooting process and significantly reduces the time required to identify the root cause⁴.

Learning from Golang: No More Silent Errors

The creators of Golang recognized the problems with silent errors and took an innovative approach: they removed exceptions entirely. Instead, methods that may fail return an error object alongside the regular result:

goCopy code

resp, err := methodThatMightFail()

This practice compels the developer to decide immediately what to do with the error. Instead of allowing errors to pass silently, they're acknowledged and addressed, promoting more robust and reliable code.

For engineering teams at startups, especially those in the early stages with limited resources and high stakes, adopting the mantra "Errors should never pass silently" is invaluable. It encourages the development of robust, reliable code, simplifies debugging, and ultimately aids in the successful scaling of the startup. By adopting practices that force immediate handling of errors, teams can prevent issues from snowballing and maintain a high standard of software quality.

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