First, Do No Harm: A Curricular Approach to Exceptions Introducing Refactoring to Promote Reliability

This paper advocates the adoption of deferred error coding within computer science curricula. It argues that it is both a sound development strategy and aligns well pedagogically. By deferring specific error handling, the student better appreciates its subtleties and its importance as an independent topic, and will tend to create more reliable applications. This paper includes other topics which may increase community awareness of the issues and enhance curricula: taxonomies of exceptions and exception handlers and the relationships between them, subtle pitfalls of exception handling, and factors influencing the selection of error reporting patterns. Much of the discussion is language independent, but specific attention is given to the Java checked exception controversy, which inspired the curriculum approach.