alt Hacker NewsThe main difference is that library is not aware of the context of the execution of the code, so cannot decide, whether the problem is expected, recoverable or severe.
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layer8 • last Saturday at 6:54 PM
The same is true for programs that are being invoked. The program only knows relative to its own purpose, and the same is again true for libraries. I don’t see the difference, other than, as already mentioned, the mechanism of program vs. library invocation.
Consider a Smalltalk-like system, or something like TCL, that doesn’t distinguish between programs and libraries regarding invocation mechanism. How would you handle logging in that case?
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And the program doesn’t know if the user is expecting failure, either. The library case is not actually much different.
It’s very reasonable that a logging framework should allow higher levels to adjust how logging at lower levels is recorded. But saying that libraries should only log debug is not. It’s very legitimate for a library to log “this looks like a problem to me”.