异常用于异常行为、错误、失败等事件。功能行为、用户错误等应该由程序逻辑来处理。由于错误的帐户或密码是登录例程中逻辑流的一部分，因此它应该能够毫无例外地处理这些情况。

异常类就像“正常”类。当一个新类“是”一个不同类型的对象，具有不同的字段和不同的操作时，您可以创建一个新类。

As a rule of thumb, you should try balance between the number of exceptions and the granularity of the exceptions. If your method throws more than 4-5 different exceptions, you can probably merge some of them into more "general" exceptions, (e.g. in your case "AuthenticationFailedException"), and using the exception message to detail what went wrong. Unless your code handles each of them differently, you needn't creates many exception classes. And if it does, may you should just return an enum with the error that occured. It's a bit cleaner this way.

The simple answer is, whenever an operation is impossible (because of either application OR because it would violate business logic). If a method is invoked and it impossible to do what the method was written to do, throw an Exception. A good example is that constructors always throw ArgumentExceptions if an instance cannot be created using the supplied parameters. Another example is InvalidOperationException, which is thrown when an operation cannot be performed because of the state of another member or members of the class.

在您的情况下，如果调用Login(用户名，密码)这样的方法，如果用户名无效，抛出UserNameNotValidException或PasswordNotCorrectException(密码不正确)确实是正确的。用户不能使用提供的参数登录(即，这是不可能的，因为它将违反身份验证)，因此抛出异常。尽管我可能从ArgumentException继承了两个异常。

话虽如此，如果因为登录失败可能很常见而不希望抛出异常，一种策略是创建一个方法，该方法返回表示不同失败的类型。这里有一个例子:

{ // class
    ...

    public LoginResult Login(string user, string password)
    {
        if (IsInvalidUser(user))
        {
            return new UserInvalidLoginResult(user);
        }
        else if (IsInvalidPassword(user, password))
        {
            return new PasswordInvalidLoginResult(user, password);
        }
        else
        {
            return new SuccessfulLoginResult();
        }
    }

    ...
}

public abstract class LoginResult
{
    public readonly string Message;

    protected LoginResult(string message)
    {
        this.Message = message;
    }
}

public class SuccessfulLoginResult : LoginResult
{
    public SucccessfulLogin(string user)
        : base(string.Format("Login for user '{0}' was successful.", user))
    { }
}

public class UserInvalidLoginResult : LoginResult
{
    public UserInvalidLoginResult(string user)
        : base(string.Format("The username '{0}' is invalid.", user))
    { }
}

public class PasswordInvalidLoginResult : LoginResult
{
    public PasswordInvalidLoginResult(string password, string user)
        : base(string.Format("The password '{0}' for username '{0}' is invalid.", password, user))
    { }
}

Most developers are taught to avoid Exceptions because of the overhead caused by throwing them. It's great to be resource-conscious, but usually not at the expense of your application design. That is probably the reason you were told not to throw your two Exceptions. Whether to use Exceptions or not usually boils down to how frequently the Exception will occur. If it's a fairly common or an fairly expectable result, this is when most developers will avoid Exceptions and instead create another method to indicate failure, because of the supposed consumption of resources.

下面是一个使用Try()模式避免在类似刚刚描述的场景中使用exception的例子:

public class ValidatedLogin
{
    public readonly string User;
    public readonly string Password;

    public ValidatedLogin(string user, string password)
    {
        if (IsInvalidUser(user))
        {
            throw new UserInvalidException(user);
        }
        else if (IsInvalidPassword(user, password))
        {
            throw new PasswordInvalidException(password);
        }

        this.User = user;
        this.Password = password;
    }

    public static bool TryCreate(string user, string password, out ValidatedLogin validatedLogin)
    {
        if (IsInvalidUser(user) || 
            IsInvalidPassword(user, password))
        {
            return false;
        }

        validatedLogin = new ValidatedLogin(user, password);

        return true;
    }
}

我个人的指导方针是:当发现当前代码块的基本假设为假时抛出异常。

例1:假设我有一个函数，它应该检查任意类，如果该类继承自List<>，则返回true。这个函数问一个问题:“这个对象是List的后代吗?”这个函数永远不会抛出异常，因为它的操作中没有灰色地带——每个单独的类要么继承了List<>，要么继承了List<>，所以答案总是“是”或“否”。

Example 2: say I have another function which examines a List<> and returns true if its length is more than 50, and false if the length is less. This function asks the question, "Does this list have more than 50 items?" But this question makes an assumption - it assumes that the object it is given is a list. If I hand it a NULL, then that assumption is false. In that case, if the function returns either true or false, then it is breaking its own rules. The function cannot return anything and claim that it answered the question correctly. So it doesn't return - it throws an exception.

这与“负载问题”逻辑谬误相当。每个函数都问一个问题。如果给出的输入使该问题成为谬误，则抛出异常。对于返回void的函数，这条线很难画出来，但底线是:如果函数对其输入的假设违反了，它应该抛出异常，而不是正常返回。

这个等式的另一方面是:如果你发现你的函数经常抛出异常，那么你可能需要改进它们的假设。

for me Exception should be thrown when a required technical or business rule fails. for instance if a car entity is associated with array of 4 tires ... if one tire or more are null ... an exception should be Fired "NotEnoughTiresException" , cuz it can be caught at different level of the system and have a significant meaning through logging. besides if we just try to flow control the null and prevent the instanciation of the car . we might never never find the source of the problem , cuz the tire isn't supposed to be null in the first place .

避免抛出异常的主要原因是抛出异常涉及大量开销。

下面这篇文章指出的一件事是，例外是针对异常条件和错误的。

错误的用户名不一定是程序错误，而是用户错误……

下面是关于。net中的异常的一个不错的起点: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms229030 (VS.80) . aspx