eli5: In programming, how does using “try and except/catch” blocks stop the program from crashing?

Question

eli5: In programming, how does using “try and except/catch” blocks stop the program from crashing?

In: 10

Answer 1

When an exception is thrown, it “bubbles up” until it’s “caught” and handled by something. If nothing catches it, the execution environment will handle it, which it usually does by closing the program. If you catch it yourself you can have the program gracefully recover from the error, or at least log the error appropriately before you close the program yourself.