Code Pet Peeve

I've been unlucky lately. I keep running into coding pet peeves of mine. One of them is the following:

try {
  //something potentially dangerous
} catch(Exception ex) {
  ex.printStackTrace();
}

OK, you can probably guess I hate the variable name "ex" and that I also hate the catch all Exception (generally, always catch the lowest level exception class you're expecting). The most offensive and biggest peeve though is the "printStackTrace()" method call. The worst is that this is the default in the code templates that come with Eclipse! Its good when you're trying to get things working, but many developers leave it in all the way to production. I avoid it at all costs. If I care, I log it or throw a more domain specific wrapped exception. The problem is when you try to find the stack trace in the logs. Of course, you can redirect standard out and error to some log, but why bother? Do it right the first time through.

I always remember the pragmatic programmer's mantra: "Dead programs tell no tales". Think about your exception handling and never settle for the defaults. It's sloppy and you will pay the devil eventually.