Ow My Foot – Error Handling Across C, Go, Rust, and Google's Absl

7 hours ago

Error handling in C is primitive, relying on global state and manual checks.
Exceptions in languages like Java and Python hide failure paths, making errors hard to track.
Go's error handling is explicit but verbose, with extensive boilerplate.
Google's Absl Status standardizes error handling with canonical codes and macros for ergonomics.
Rust's Result and ? operator provide clean error propagation with minimal boilerplate.
anyhow and thiserror crates in Rust offer type-erased and structured error handling respectively.
Error domain conversion in Rust can lead to context loss if not handled carefully.
unwrap() in Rust is useful during development but should be avoided in production.
Rust's debugging experience is hampered by lack of stack traces, relying on context annotations.
Effective error handling requires organizational discipline and clear conventions.

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