Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is something that Elixir nailed. The typical idioms for return types are `{:ok, ok_value} | {:error, error_value}`, for which callers can pattern match against and handle appropriately. If fail-fast is desired, many functions will also have a variant signaled by a postfix exclamation mark (e.g., some_function!(...)), that returns `ok_value` or raises an exception.
> This is something that Elixir nailed. The typical idioms for return types are `{:ok, ok_value} | {:error, error_value}`, for which callers can pattern match against and handle appropriately. Agree this is a good pattern. Im not categorically against throwing errors but I like returning errors or the result and then having to check at the caller. Do this in typescript a lot.
Re: If you're just going to sit there doing nothing, at least do nothing correctly
#251Any typed language could use this pattern, though with Elixir specifically it was idiomized from the very beginning and all libraries use it, which makes error handling very consistent even when piping operations. The common option to fail fast is also handy when crashing the process is preferred and no matching is required to unwrap the value