What does "error handling" mean in programming?
error handling is one of the most common terms in software development. This guide explains what it means, how it is used in practice, and why it matters, with real examples from the developer world.
Definition
The practice of anticipating, detecting, and responding to errors in a program. Good error handling distinguishes between expected errors (network timeouts, invalid input) and unexpected errors (bugs), provides useful error messages, and avoids crashing the entire application when one operation fails.
Example
"The payment service has error handling for every external call: timeouts retry three times, invalid responses return a 422, and unexpected errors are logged and return a 500."
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