Exception transparency - lone throws (no checked exceptions)

[Alessio Stalla]

On Fri, Jun 11, 2010 at 7:59 PM, Brian Goetz <brian.goetz at oracle.com> wrote:
> I think this is an interesting exploration of the design space, so I
> appreciate your posting it here.  However, as several other posters here have
> suggested, this isn't really "exception transparency" as much as it is a
> limited form of "turn off checked exceptions."  (This is a solution to the
> problem of exception transparency much as arson is a solution to the problem
> of cockroaches.)

I don't agree. If there were no checked exceptions, this whole
discussion would not have happened - unchecked exceptions are already
transparent in Java. Checked exceptions are not, and we want them to
be. How? Making them behave like unchecked ones in certain
circumstances seems to me a reasonable solution to that very problem.
Not the only possible solution of course, but it's worth to seriously
consider it imho.

> Besides the points raised here, I could easily imagine a world where
> developers who don't like checked exception just decorated every method with
> "throws".  I don't know if that is the intent of the proposal or simply a
> side-effect, but it is (in our view) some pretty serious collateral damage.
> (People are free to argue that they don't like checked exceptions and they
> should be abolished.  But not here; there are plenty of other fora where such
> discussions can happen.)

And I can easily imagine a world where developers who don't like
checked exceptions just rewrap them all in unchecked ones. Actually I
don't even need to imagine it, it's already real. Are you arguing that
since adding "throws" is easier than rewrapping exceptions, people
will use it more?

Alessio