When the Python Bites: A Survival Guide to Errors

By Evan Kohilas

Elevator Pitch

You can easily make them, you’re afraid of them, and they’ll ruin your day. I’m talking about Errors in Python. Why do they exist? Do we really need them? And how do we deal with them instead of panicking when they appear?

Description

For an experienced programmer, Python does an exceptional job at describing errors, but in the eyes of a beginner, they’re completely new and understandably scary.

Come along and gain a better understanding of errors! We’ll talk about their history of errors and why they exist, how to read Python errors, and the basics of handling and making them.

Notes

Who and Why

I’ve taught a lot of Python, whether that’s kids or university students, but a strong issue that comes up, even with Python’s amazing and concise error system is that beginners have problems understanding errors.

I wanted to do an explanatory talk about errors that can be used anywhere to help beginners who are new to programming and Python, and understand why errors exist and how to deal with them.

Outline

0-3 min: Intro

  • Introduction
  • What are errors in their simplest form?

3-8 min: History

  • How can errors be done without error handling (Linux Kernel)?
  • How they were done in C with asserts.
  • Why are/aren’t they useful?

8-13 min: Python Errors

  • Why do we need error handling at all?
  • What are Python errors?

13-18 min: Debugging

  • How do we read error output?
  • What are the different types of Errors?

18-23 min: Handling Errors

  • How are errors raised?
  • How do you catch errors using try, except, else, finally?
  • Can you make your own errors?