Is it okay for constructors to throw runtime exceptions? - java

When checked exceptions are thrown from methods in a constructor that the constructor can't handle is it okay to catch them and throw them back out as a runtime exception if your sure the application can't handle it and will be useless without the object being constructed?

Yes. This is standard practice.
In Effective Java, 2nd Ed. this is covered by Item 61, "Throw exceptions appropriate to the abstraction". Whether the resulting exception is checked or unchecked is a also covered by Effective Java in Item 58, "Use checked exceptions for recoverable conditions and runtime exceptions for programming errors".
That this is a constructor rather than a normal method isn't really an issue. (In fact, constructors arguably have more freedom as they are not bound by the super's interface.)
When throwing an exception as a result of another exception it's a good idea to ensure that you're setting the cause on the new exception.

Yes, this is inevitable in many constructors anyway when they call other methods since there is always a possibility that they will already throw unchecked exceptions.

Yes it is completly valid to throw the exception in your constructor. You have little or no other choice but to do this, especially when you are simply trying to construct an object and things just don't work out right.

It's perfectly OK to throw a checked exception to indicate that construction of the object failed, as Chris Jester-Young commented already. Whether it is a good idea to throw an unchecked exception is another issue. You would loose the nagging of the compiler that urges you to catch and handle the exception, which you will certainly want to do.

Yes. Unless you know how the exception should be handled, you're better off throwing it, rather than simply swallowing it and printing out a stack trace (or worse, doing absolutely nothing).
This will help prevent some extremely difficult-to-debug errors later on.

Personally I hate to see constructors throw checked exceptions (as doppeldish already pointed out). Nevertheless, how can you be sure that the application can not handle the exception? Even if the application can't handle it, maybe the user can, by simply trying again?

Related

Why my Ide is not warning me about handle this exception [duplicate]

I've studied that: With an unchecked exception, however, the compiler doesn't force client programmers either to catch the exception or declare it in a throws clause. In fact, client programmers may not even know that the exception could be thrown. eg, StringIndexOutOfBoundsException thrown by String's charAt() method.
what its mean?
according to that code there is no need to put try catch block in code,
but i've seen compiler forces to put the code in try catch block.
I'm very confused what they are exactly?
Unchecked exceptions are those that extend RuntimeException class. Compiler will never force you to catch such exception or force you to declare it in the method using throws keyword. All other exception types (that do not extend RuntimeException) are checked and therefore must be declared to be thrown and/or catched.
Checked exceptions are used when you want the caller of your method (i.e the user of your API) to explicitly handle the exceptional case in your API. Checked exceptions are declared when you believe the call will be able to do something meaningful with that exceptional case, like retrying the call, rolling changes back or converting it into some user-readable error message.
If you believe that there is nothing useful the call can do about the exception (especially when it represents a bug, or a wrong usage of your API), then the exception should be unchecked. Also, an API with too many checked exceptions can be annoying to program with (e.g. try using java reflection API=)
Checked Exceptions are useful for handling events that occur in the normal operation of a program. An example would be an IOException that is thrown when a file cannot be opened. These exceptions occur even if there is nothing wrong with the program. It is necessary, therefore, to tell the program how to handle the exception.
Unchecked exceptions are useful for identifying defects in the code. For instance, a NullPointerException is thrown when a value is read on a null object. Thus an Unchecked Exception represents a problem that requires a manual fix by the programmer. It is reasonable for the program to crash in order to avoid erroneous behavior, so a try-catch block is not required (but might be desirable in order to provide mitigation, such as displaying an error to the user).
What is your question exactly?
Compilers shouldn't (and won't) enforce you to try/catch unchecked exceptions, that would go against exactly what they are.
The general idea is that checked exceptions are something you may be able to foresee but may be based on input that is out of your control and that you have to deal with.
Unchecked exceptions will usually represent bugs in your program.
There's a number of people that think checked exceptions are a mistake in the Java platform and they only use them very sparingly or not at all. You can read more about this debate by searching google.
It is because,
Unchecked Exceptions are not a result of programmer's fault. Instead they are the serious consequences where we(programmer) aren't expected to do much with it.
In case of Checked Exception, it is an exception generated because of the programmer's fault & often can be resolved by programmer itself.
Check the following links :
Why RunTime Exceptions are unchecked ?
Checked vs Unchecked Exception ?
All Exceptions are part of run time and not compile time. There are two kinds of exceptions checked exceptions and unchecked exceptions. Examples of checked exceptions are IO Exceptions, ClassNotFound Exception and examples of unchecked exceptions are runtime exceptions. In the case of checked exceptions, error or warning message comes at compile time so that the user will take care of it at runtime by using throws keyword, which is used to throw exceptions to the default catch mechanism system. But in case of unchecked exceptions warning is not there at compile time.
**Checked Exceptions
Exceptions which are to be checked or handled or should be taken care during the time of writing the code are called as checked exceptions.
For eg:
1. we have FileNotFoundException -->which will be occured when we are writing some code related to file classes. There will e defenetly posibility of non existence of file. In such case in order to handle them , we are forced to handle those exception for sure.
2. one more example is ParseException ,which will be occured when we are dealing with date functions.
UnChecked Exceptions
These are the exceptions that are optional to be handled during the time of coding. Its up to us whether we handle them or not. In case if we fail to handle them, There is a chance of getting runtime errors during the exceution.
For eg:
We have something called NullPointerException,ArithemeticException,NosSuchElementFoundException and so on. These are like optional things we dont even have to handle them. More over even jvm or compiler will not recommend us to handle them.**
in simple words,
checked exceptions are those which can be and should be handled by your code(therefore compiler forces you to handle them)
unchecked exceptions are those which lie beyond programmer's control(therefore compiler doesn't forces you to handle them)
use the same rule even while creating your custom exceptions.

Should I put throws IllegalArgumentException at the function?

I'm building a scientific software with lots of calculations and of course arguments can have wrong lengths etc... So I used IllegalArgumentException class as it seemed right name for the issue, but should I put the throws IllegalArgumentException at the function definition ?
I am asking this because after I wrote it, the Eclipse Editor didn't ask me to surround the function with try and catch. I thought this is how try and catch were enforced. I've read the Exception handling tutorial at Java.com yet I'm not sure I understood the part regarding my question right though.
RuntimeExceptions like IllegalArgumentException are used to indicate programming errors. The program itself should rarely be able to handle it. Someone needs to manually fix the code.
Potential RuntimeExceptions should be documented somehow in the function contract (i.e. javadoc), either with the explicit #throws, or while describing the inputs. If you don't have a javadoc for the function, you may want to add the throws clause just to document the potential pitfalls of using the function, but in general adding throws clauses for runtime exceptions is discouraged.
If giving a wrong length is not actually a programming error, but is an exception situation, I would create a new checked exception (such as BadLengthError). If it is not an exceptional situation, don't use exceptions for flow control.
There's two types of exceptions:
runtime exceptions (like IllegalArgumentException and NullPointerException for example) don't need to be explicitly caught, because they 'shouldn't happen'. When they do, of course, you need to handle them somewhere.
regular exceptions NEED to be caught or declared to be thrown because they represent a more intrinsically difficult kind of error.
You need to read up on Unchecked Exceptions - exceptions which inherit from RuntimeException. They don't need to be declared in the method header.
http://download.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/essential/exceptions/runtime.html
The last paragraph sums it up:
If a client can reasonably be expected
to recover from an exception, make it
a checked exception. If a client
cannot do anything to recover from the
exception, make it an unchecked
exception.
IllegalArgumentException (along with some others, for example NullPointerException) are examples of a RuntimeException. This type of exception is not what's known as a checked exception. Java requires that methods declare which checked exceptions they throw and that if a called method might throw a checked exception, the calling method should either declare that it throws the exception itself, or catch and handle it.
As such, my concrete recommendation would be no, don't declare it. Certainly, though, you don't want to be catching it. In most cases, you also don't want to be throwing it unless this is unexpected behaviour. If it's quite normal and reasonable for the the method to be getting a value it doesn't like, an Exception is the wrong way to handle it.
You might also want to consider making use of assertions.
the first point when understanding exceptions is that they are for exceptional situations. While thinking about your method you must ask: "Should this method throws an exception if an exceptional value is passed through?" If the answer is "yes", put it in your method declaration.
I don't know if you get the idea, but it's kind of simple. It's just a matter of practice.

If catching null pointer exception is not a good practice, is catching exception a good one?

I have heard that catching NullPointerException is a bad practice, and i think it is sensibly so. Letting the NullPointerException to propagate to the top would allow the detection of a something going wrong. But many times I have seen many of my friends catching Exception directly so that they need not bother about all the different kinds of exceptions that might occur in the above code. Is this a good practice? What are the other kinds of exceptions that are best left unhandled? And besides it also makes sense to me to handle NullPointerException over a specific code where we are sure of the source of the exception. So when are exceptions to be handled and when should they not be handled? And what would be the possible list of exception that are best left unhandled?
Pokemon exception-handling is bad. Especially, if it's an empty block and you're simply swallowing them. You have specifically-typed exceptions for the reason that they actually mean specific things in specific contexts (essentially they're telling you what went wrong). So by catching Exception you're saying that you don't care what those exceptions are and that you don't care what happened. This is probably not what you want.
In general, when catching exceptions follow these rules:
Does it make sense to handle the exception at this level? If yes, then handle it. If not, then propagate.
In conjunction with the first rule, "handling" can also mean, catching, wrapping, and re-throwing. This is a way of preventing abstraction-leakage so that callers of your method don't have to know about the underlying implementation.
An empty catch block doesn't mean that you've handled the exception. That's called "swallowing"; at the very least, you want to log the exception. Sometimes an exception happening is actually part of the logical flow of your code, and so you might want to do something special (but this is, pardon the pun, the exception rather than the rule. It is better to check for situations that cause exceptions rather than incorporating them into the logical flow of your code).
You can easily check for a null value in your code, so there is no need to explicitly catch a null-pointer exception. It doesn't make sense to let a NullPointerException happen (and it's bad practice). Even if you have some code that throws a NullPointerException, and it is code that you do not control and cannot fix, you should determine the input parameters that cause the NullPointerException and specifically test for them.
Another exception that you shouldn't catch is the IllegalArgumentException. This exception means that you've passed in an argument that does not make sense. Instead of catching this exception, you should explicitly test your input parameters to ensure that they are sane and that they cannot cause an IllegalArgumentException.
The 'reason' that catching NullPointerException is considered a bad practice is not because you're supposed to let it bubble up when something goes wrong! Saying any exception is 'best left unhandled' based solely on its type seems like a bad idea.
A NPE is considered the result of a programming error. A strictly correct program should never generate one. The reason seeing it caught is bad is it usually means that the code threw one, and the programmer decided to just catch it and cover it up, rather than fix the broken code that caused it in the first place!
If, for example, you were coupled for business reasons to an API that has a bug inside and occassionally throws a null pointer, it would be perfectly legitimate to catch it, do something about it/inform the user with a better message. Letting 'null' hit the UI just because someone said "Catching Null Pointer Exception is bad" would make no sense!
Catching java.lang.Exception can be legitimate in specific cases, but generally "I'm lazy" is not one of them. :) For example if you're implementing an API and want to make absolutely sure no exception ever comes out of it that isn't in the specification, you might catch Exception and wrap it in some application exception you've defined.
You should only catch an Exception if you can add some value by doing so. Otherwise you should let it pass to the caller.
NullPointerException is usually the result of a bug in your code. How can you sensibly fix this in a catch block?
Not being bothered about Exceptions is not good practice.
In general, the only times you should catch an exception is if you can handle it in some meaningful way. If you can't you should simply let it bubble to the top and terminate the process. For instance, could you recover in some meaningful way from a NullPointerException or I/O error? I think not.
My rules for exception handling:
In general, don't catch exceptions, unless you can handle them in some meaningful way.
Catch exceptions at process/machine boundaries, log the caught exception along with any context available to you and re-throw it. If the exception is a custom exception, you may wrap it in an exception of a type known/useful to the invoking process and throw that.
You may also catch exceptions at a low level, where you have the most runtime context available, log the exception and associated context, then rethrow the exception.
When rethrowing, use throw ; rather than throw caughtException ;. Use of the former syntax preserves the original stack trace; use of the latter syntax creates a new stack trace, beginning with throw caughtException ; -- you lose all the context and call stack up to the point at which the exception was caught.
You may, if you so choose, catch exceptions at a high level and gracefully terminate the process, logging the exception information so as to help debug and correct the underlying problem.
Do not use exceptions as a flow control mechanism (if possible). Exceptions are supposed to be, well, exceptional in nature. Rather, premptively, enforce the caller's end of the contract (preconditions) for any methods you are invoking.
See Bertrand Meyers' book , Object Oriented Software Construction, 2nd ed. for more information.
The main rule about catching exception is that you have to know why you are doing this. Exception class is caught in cases when programmer wants to do generic error processing and he does not really care what exactly happened, the main thing is just something went wrong. In that case he may decide to rollback transaction or do some cleanup.
If you are catching specific exception try to apply the same rule. I you know exactly why you are doing that, then it's to do that. But it's very rare case when someone would want to do something really special in case of NPE.
if you have a graceful way to handle your exception it is useful to catch it, if not hope that the caller has a nice way to handle it.

Why have a project specific RuntimeException?

Is there any point in having a com.myco.myproj.MyProjRuntimeException,
which completley extends RuntimeException?
Yes. Do throw unchecked exceptions, and subclass them.
There is much talk about whether checked exceptions are really any good. In a nutshell, if I throw a checked exception, does my client really have anything to do with it?
Unchecked exceptions are a good way to notify your clients about exceptional situations (including illegal pre-conditions), and yet not burdening them with the need to wrap calls to your API with try-catch blocks, which most of the time basically serve no purpose, other than debugging, tracing, etc.
So why not throw a RuntimeException? It's not elegant, and it's less readable. Make it your own exception which derives from it, even if it's for no reason other than being more specific when throwing the exception.
It depends on if you want to handle the exceptional condition differently than other exceptions farther up the call stack. If you intend to catch and handle the exception, then I'd recommend creating the custom type. It makes for more legible code and cleaner catch clauses. If you're not going to catch the exception, then there's probably little reason to create a new type.
Not really. The extra information you get from having the exception name show up in a stack trace could be given by simply setting the message string of a standard RuntimeException. However (come to think of it), it might be useful to subclass RuntimeException simply to prepend a custom string onto any message.
I tend to only make custom checked exceptions; generally, the standard unchecked exceptions cover enough potential cases already.
Many people (me and the designers of C# included) believe that checked exceptions are a failed language experiment and avoid them. Then, creating your own exception hierarchy under RuntimeException is an obvious step.
in Effective Java, Joshua Bloch writes:
Use run-time exceptions to indicate
programming errors. The great majority
of run-time exceptions indicate
precondition violations.
That being said, you could use that run-time exception as a base class for a hierarchy of run-time exceptions, used in your project. That way, errors become more legible and traceable.
In my opinion, you should only create new Exceptions if you really need them, i.e. want to catch them and do a specific treatment on them. On all other cases, I don't really see the usefulness.
It's a good style to maintain your own exceptions hierarchy.
But I've seen just a few people who can use this technique with real profit.
Subclass exceptions based on how they are handled rather than who wrote them...
Normally runtime exception can't be handled in another way than logging the error and possibly display an error message.
Checked exceptions might possibly have a specific fallback, and in that case they should probly not subclass a "MyFrameWorkException" - as in that case, catching a MyFrameWorkException would not do more than the generic catch (logging etc.)
It is a rather bad practice to invent a whole hiearachy of exceptions that does have little in common except the fact that they belong to a particular framework.
(packages are supposedly used for just that.)
It is perfectly ok to subclass RuntimeException (if the existing subclasses are not a god fit)
Document unchecked exceptions. Be conservative with checked exceptions, and don't build hierarchies.
Rod Jonhson wrote on this in Expert one-on-one J2EE design and development and as in Tom's answer RuntimeException should be used for programming errors.
A good example is SQLException, lower level data access API should catch them and throw your own "SQLRuntimeException" as most of the time the calling code cannot do anything with the exception. This way, your higher level apis are not forced to catch or carry lower level exceptions in their signature, which make code simpler and more focused on the business domain.

In Java, when should I create a checked exception, and when should it be a runtime exception? [duplicate]

This question already has answers here:
Closed 10 years ago.
The community reviewed whether to reopen this question last year and left it closed:
Original close reason(s) were not resolved
Possible Duplicate:
When to choose checked and unchecked exceptions
When should I create a checked exception, and when should I make a runtime exception?
For example, suppose I created the following class:
public class Account {
private float balance;
/* ... constructor, getter, and other fields and methods */
public void transferTo(Account other, float amount) {
if (amount > balance)
throw new NotEnoughBalanceException();
/* ... */
}
}
How should I create my NotEnoughBalanceException? Should it extend Exception or RuntimeException? Or should I just use IllegalArgumentException instead?
There's a LOT of disagreement on this topic. At my last job, we ran into some real issues with Runtime exceptions being forgotten until they showed up in production (on agedwards.com), so we resolved to use checked exceptions exclusively.
At my current job, I find that there are many who are for Runtime exceptions in many or all cases.
Here's what I think: Using CheckedExceptions, I am forced at compile time to at least acknowledge the exception in the caller. With Runtime exceptions, I am not forced to by the compiler, but can write a unit test that makes me deal with it. Since I still believe that the earlier a bug is caught the cheaper it is to fix it, I prefer CheckedExceptions for this reason.
From a philosophical point of view, a method call is a contract to some degree between the caller and the called. Since the compiler enforces the types of parameters that are passed in, it seems symmetrical to let it enforce the types on the way out. That is, return values or exceptions.
My experience tells me that I get higher quality, that is, code that JUST WORKS, when I'm using checked exceptions. Checked exceptions may clutter code, but there are techniques to deal with this. I like to translate exceptions when passing a layer boundary. For example, if I'm passing up from my persistence layer, I would like to convert an SQL exception to a persistence exception, since the next layer up shouldn't care that I'm persisting to a SQL database, but will want to know if something could not be persisted. Another technique I use is to create a simple hierarchy of exceptions. This lets me write cleaner code one layer up, since I can catch the superclass, and only deal with the individual subclasses when it really matters.
In general, I think the advice by Joshua Bloch in Effective Java best summarises the answer to your question: Use checked expections for recoverable conditions and runtime exceptions for programming errors (Item 58 in 2nd edition).
So in this case, if you really want to use exceptions, it should be a checked one. (Unless the documentation of transferTo() made it very clear that the method must not be called without checking for sufficient balance first by using some other Account method - but this would seem a bit awkward.)
But also note Items 59: Avoid unnecessary use of checked exceptions and 57: Use exceptions only for exceptional conditions. As others have pointed out, this case may not warrant an exception at all. Consider returning false (or perhaps a status object with details about what happened) if there is not enough credit.
When to use checked exceptions? Honestly? In my humble opinion... never. I think it's been about 6 years since I last created a checked exception.
You can't force someone to deal with an error. Arguably it makes code worse not better. I can't tell you the number of times I've come across code like this:
try {
...
} catch (IOException e) {
// do nothing
}
Whereas I have countless times written code like this:
try {
...
} catch (IOException e) {
throw new RuntimeExceptione(e);
}
Why? Because a condition (not necessarily IOException; that's just an example) wasn't recoverable but was forced down my throat anyway and I am often forced to make the choice between doing the above and polluting my API just to propagate a checked exception all the way to the top where it's (rightlfully) fatal and will be logged.
There's a reason Spring's DAO helper classes translate the checked SQLException into the unchecked DataAccessException.
If you have things like lack of write permissions to a disk, lack of disk space or other fatal conditions you want to be making as much noise as possible and the way to do this is with... unchecked exceptions (or even Errors).
Additionally, checked exceptions break encapsulation.
This idea that checked exceptions should be used for "recoverable" errors is really pie-in-the-sky wishful thinking.
Checked exceptions in Java were an experiment... a failed experiment. We should just cut our losses, admit we made a mistake and move on. IMHO .Net got it right by only having unchecked exceptions. Then again it had the second-adopter advantage of learning from Java's mistakes.
IMHO, it shouldn't be an exception at all. An exception, in my mind, should be used when exceptional things happen, and not as flow controls.
In your case, it isn't at all an exceptional status that someone tries to transfer more money than the balance allows. I figure these things happen very often in the real world. So you should program against these situations. An exception might be that your if-statement evaluates the balance good, but when the money is actually being subtracted from the account, the balance isn't good anymore, for some strange reason.
An exception might be that, just before calling transferTo(), you checked that the line was open to the bank. But inside the transferTo(), the code notices that the line isn't open any more, although, by all logic, it should be. THAT is an exception. If the line can't be opened, that's not an exception, that's a plausible situation.
IMHO recap: Exceptions == weird black magic.
being-constructive-edit:
So, not to be all too contradictive, the method itself might very well throw an exception. But the use of the method should be controlled: You first check the balance (outside of the transferTo() method), and if the balance is good, only then call transferTo(). If transferTo() notices that the balance, for some odd reason, isn't good anymore, you throw the exception, which you diligently catch.
In that case, you have all your ducks in a row, and know that there's nothing more you can do (because what was true became false, as if by itself), other than log the exception, send a notification to someone, and tell the customer politely that someone didn't sacrifice their virgins properly during the last full moon, and the problem will be fixed at the first possible moment.
less-enterprisey-suggestion-edit:
If you are doing this for your own pleasure (and the case seems to be this, see comments), I'd suggest returning a boolean instead. The usage would be something like this:
// ...
boolean success = transferTo(otherAccount, ONE_MILLION_DOLLARS_EXCLAMATION);
if (!success) {
UI.showMessage("Aww shucks. You're not that rich");
return; // or something...
} else {
profit();
}
// ...
My rule is
if statements for business logic errors (like your code)
cheched exceptions for environment errors where the application can recover
uncheched exception for environment errors where there is no recovery
Example for checked exception: Network is down for an application that can work offline
Example for uncheched exception: Database is down on a CRUD web application.
There is much documentation on the subject. You can find a lot by browsing the Hibernate
web pages since they changed all exceptions of Hibernate 2.x from checked to unchecked in version 3.x
I recently had a problem with exceptions, code threw NullPointerException and I had no idea why, after some investigation it turned out that real exception was swallowed(it was in new code, so its still being done) and method just returned null. If you do checked exceptions you must understand that bad programmers will just try catch it and ignore exception.
My feeling is that the checked exception is a useful contract that should be used sparingly. The classic example of where I think a checked exception is a good idea is an InterruptedException. My feeling is that I do want to be able to stop a thread / process when I want it to stop, regardless of how long someone has specified to Thread.sleep().
So, trying to answer your specific question, is this something that you absolutely want to make sure that everyone deals with? To my mind, a situation where an Account doesn't have enough money is a serious enough problem that you have to deal with it.
In response to Peter's comment: here's an example using InterruptedException as concrete case of an exception that should be handled and you need to have a useful default handler. Here is what I strongly recommend, certainly at my real job. You should at least do this:
catch (InterruptedException ie) {
Thread.currentThread().interrupt();
}
That handler will ensure that the code catches the checked exception and does exactly what you want: get this thread to stop. Admittedly, if there's another exception handler / eater upstream, it's not impossible that it will handle the exception less well. Even so, FindBugs can help you find those.
Now, reality sets in: you can't necessarily force everyone who writes an exception handler for your checked exception to handle it well. That said, at least you'll be able to "Find Usages" and know where it is used and give some advice.
Short form: you're inflicting a load the users of your method if you use a checked exception. Make sure that there's a good reason for it, recommend a correct handling method and document all this extensively.
From Unchecked Exceptions -- The Controversy:
If a client can reasonably be expected
to recover from an exception, make it
a checked exception. If a client
cannot do anything to recover from the
exception, make it an unchecked
exception.
Note that an unchecked exception is one derived from RuntimeException and a checked exception is one derived from Exception.
Why throw a RuntimeException if a client cannot do anything to recover from the exception? The article explains:
Runtime exceptions represent problems
that are the result of a programming
problem, and as such, the API client
code cannot reasonably be expected to
recover from them or to handle them in
any way. Such problems include
arithmetic exceptions, such as
dividing by zero; pointer exceptions,
such as trying to access an object
through a null reference; and indexing
exceptions, such as attempting to
access an array element through an
index that is too large or too small.
A checked exception means that clients of your class are forced to deal with it by the compiler. Their code cannot compile unless they add a try/catch block.
The designers of C# have decided that unchecked exceptions are preferred.
Or you can follow the C-style and check return values and not throw exceptions.
Exceptions do have a cost, so they shouldn't be used for control flow, as noted earlier. But the one thing they have going for them is that they can't be ignored.
If you decide that in this case to eschew exceptions, you run the risk that a client of your class will ignore the return value or fail to check the balance before trying to transfer.
I'd recommend an unchecked exception, and I'd give it a descriptive name like InsufficientFundsException to make it quite clear what was going on.
Simply put, use checked exception only as part of external contract for a library, and only if the client wants/needs to catch it. Remember, when using checked exception you are forcing yourself on the caller. With runtime exception, if they are well-documented, you are giving the caller a choice.
It is a known problem that checked exceptions are over-used in Java, but it doesn't mean that they are all bad. That's why it is such in integral part of the Spring philosophy, for example (http://www.springsource.org/about)
The advantage of checked exceptions is that the compiler forces the developer to deal with them earlier. The disadvantage, in my mind anyway, is that developers tend to be lazy and impatient, and stub out the exception-handling code with the intention of coming back and fixing it later. Which, of course, rarely happens.
Bruce Eckel, author of Thinking in Java, has a nice essay on this topic.
I don't think the scenario (insufficient funds) warrants throwing an Exception --- it's simply not exceptional enough, and should be handled by the normal control flow of the program. However, if I really had to throw an exception, I would choose a checked exception, by extending Exception, not RuntimeException which is unchecked. This forces me to handle the exception explicitly (I need to declare it to be thrown, or catch it somewhere).
IllegalArgumentException is a subclass of RuntimeException, which makes it an unchecked exception. I would only consider throwing this if the caller has some convenient way of determining whether or not the method arguments are legal. In your particular code, it's not clear if the caller has access to balance, or whether the whole "check balance and transfer funds" is an atomic operation (if it isn't then the caller really has no convenient way of validating the arguments).
EDIT: Clarified my position on throwing IllegalArgumentException.
Line is not always clear, but for me usually RuntimeException = programming errors, checked exceptions = external errors. This is very rough categorization though. Like others say, checked exceptions force you to handle, or at least think for a very tiny fraction of time, about it.
Myself, I prefer using checked exceptions as I can.
If you are an API Developer (back-end developer), use checked exceptions, otherwise, use Runtime exceptions.
Also note that, using Runtime exceptions in some situations is to be considered a big mistake, for example if you are to throw runtime exceptions from your session beans (see : http://m-hewedy.blogspot.com/2010/01/avoid-throwing-runtimeexception-from.html for more info about the problem from using Runtime excpetions in session beans).

Categories