Exception Handling guideline- Python vs Java

Question

I am original Java developer, for me, checked Exception in Java is obviously/easy enough for me to decide to catch or throw it to the caller to handle later. Then it comes Python, there is no checked exception, so conceptually, nothing forces you to handle anything(In my experience, you don't even know what exceptions are potentially thrown without checking the document). I've been hearing quite a lot from Python guys that, in Python, sometimes you better just let it fail at runtime instead of trying to handle the exceptions.

Can someone give me some pointers regarding to:

1. what's the guideline/best practice for Python Exception Handling?

2. what's the difference between Java and Python in this regard?

Answer 1

OK, I can try and give an answer which I'll keep as neutral as it can be... (note: I have done Python professionally for a few months, but I am far from mastering the language in its entirety)

1. The guidelines are "free"; if you come from a Java background, you will certainly spend more time than most Python devs out there looking for documentation on what is thrown when, and have more try/except/finally than what is found in regular python code. In other words: do what suits you.

2. Apart from the fact that they can be thrown anywhere, at any moment, Python has multi-exception catch (only available in Java since 7), with (somewhat equivalent to Java 7's try-with-resources), you can have more than one except block (like Java can catch more than once), etc. Additionally, there are no real conventions that I know of on how exceptions should be named, so don't be fooled if you see SomeError, it may well be what a Java dev regards as a "checked exception" and not an Error.