Looking for feedback on weighted voting algorithm

Michael Selik michael.selik at gmail.com
Fri Apr 15 20:35:02 EDT 2016


On Fri, Apr 15, 2016, 7:56 PM <sohcahtoa82 at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thursday, April 14, 2016 at 1:48:40 PM UTC-7, Michael Selik wrote:
> > I suggest not worrying about sanitizing inputs. If someone provides bad
> > data, Python will do the right thing: stop the program and print an
> > explanation of what went wrong, often a more helpful message than one
> you'd
> > write. Use error handling mostly for when you want to do something
> *other*
> > than stop the program.
> >
> > I'm not sure I'd use NaN instead of raise division by zero error. NaNs
> can
> > be troublesome for downstream code that might not notice until it gets
> > confusing. A div-by-zero error is clear and easier to track down because
> of
> > the traceback.
>
> I'd much rather sanitize the inputs and tell the user they did something
> bad than to have the script crash and give a 500 Internal Server Error to
> the user.
>

Right, my advice was only good if the user can read the original error and
traceback. And can restart the program, etc.

Even worse, I definitely wouldn't want to give any hints of the source code
> organization by letting the user see the traceback.
>

Depends on the kind of user you have.

>



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