Make errors explicit

Always make error conditions explicit and visible rather than hiding them through silent failures, default return values, or unchecked operations. This includes validating results before use, using assertions for invalid states, and logging unexpected conditions.

copy reviewer prompt

Prompt

Reviewer Prompt

Always make error conditions explicit and visible rather than hiding them through silent failures, default return values, or unchecked operations. This includes validating results before use, using assertions for invalid states, and logging unexpected conditions.

Key practices:

  • Check results of operations like find() before dereferencing to prevent crashes
  • Use assertions instead of returning default values to hide errors: assert(scrollOffset.isFinite && itemExtent.isFinite) rather than return 0
  • Add error logging for conditions that shouldn’t happen: FML_LOG(ERROR) << "Unexpected condition"
  • Throw clear errors for unexpected duplicate events rather than silently ignoring them

Example of making errors explicit:

// Bad: Hides error by returning default value
if (itemExtent > 0.0) {
  final double actual = scrollOffset / itemExtent;
  if (!actual.isFinite) {
    return 0; // Silently hides the error
  }
}

// Good: Makes error explicit with assertion
assert(scrollOffset.isFinite && itemExtent.isFinite, 
       'scrollOffset and itemExtent must be finite');
if (itemExtent > 0.0) {
  final double actual = scrollOffset / itemExtent;
}

This approach helps developers identify issues during development and provides better debugging information when problems occur.

Source discussions