You can do other things....like say, print out on stderr that there is a problem...

gte910h on April 18, 2010 | parent | context | favorite | on: How to write to stderr so people will like you

You can do other things....like say, print out on stderr that there is a problem after a certain timeout, email technical support, or restart the second program.

If you use blocking IO, you just silently fail.