Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I asked what happened when you got an error, and both instructors had never been asked that question, and both had ZERO clue about it. No comprendo. Did you mean, what was supposed to happen? Sounds very context-dependent to me. Sometimes you'll pause and show the user the error, sometimes you'll log it and move on, and if it is fatal you'll shutdown immediately to prevent further harm.
The language had error handling constructs, but in the years they'd been teaching the course, nobody had ever asked how the error handling actually was to be used in practice. I found it shocking that nobody cared about error handling, especially on a platform that generated programs to be used by non-computer literate civilians.
In my experience, newbie students are working hard to get things working correctly in simple cases. So error handling feels like a luxury at that point.