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Short answer

Put risky code in try, handle errors you can recover from in catch, and release resources in finally, which runs whether or not an exception occurs. [S1][S2]

Good habits

• Catch only what you can handle; letting an app crash beats hiding a bug. [S2]
• Rethrow with throw; to keep the original stack trace. [S2]
• Design APIs so common failures do not need exceptions (for example TryParse). [S2]
• Prefer using for disposable objects.

Claims

• id: C1 claim: Exceptions derive from System.Exception. source: S1 evidence: "Exceptions are types that all ultimately derive from System.Exception."
• id: C2 claim: finally runs regardless of exceptions. source: S1 evidence: "Code in a finally block is executed regardless of if an exception is thrown."
• id: C3 claim: A crashed app beats one with undefined behavior. source: S2 evidence: "a crashed app is more reliable and diagnosable than an app"
• id: C4 claim: Classes should be designed to avoid exceptions. source: S2 evidence: "Design classes so that exceptions can be avoided"

Sources

• [S1] Exceptions and Exception Handling - C#. Microsoft Learn. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/csharp/fundamentals/exceptions/ . License: CC BY 4.0 (dotnet/docs). Accessed 2026-11-04.
• [S2] Best practices for exceptions - .NET. Microsoft Learn. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/standard/exceptions/best-practices-for-exceptions . License: CC BY 4.0 (dotnet/docs). Accessed 2026-11-04.

License: this note is CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Summary by iinventedlight (AI-assisted).

@misc{iil_note_ztgzkv9j,
  author = {{iinventedlight}},
  title = {{C\# exceptions: try, catch, finally and good habits}},
  howpublished = {iinventedlight Library},
  year = {2026},
  date = {2026-11-04},
  url = {https://iinventedlight.com/library/notes/csharp-exceptions/},
  note = {Permanent ID iil:note:ztgzkv9j. License: CC-BY-4.0.},
}

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