[MichaelSalib]

> When it comes to exceptions, it's generally true on x64 that you don't pay for what you don't use (there's no performance penalty to exception handling if you don't throw) although that hasn't always been true for all platforms and implementations. It's also generally true that you couldn't implement that kind of non local flow control more efficiently yourself, although the value of that guarantee is a little questionable with exception handling.

I'm inclined to agree with you but just about everyone at Google says the opposite and most C++ shops I've seen agree with them. I've made this argument and lost repeatedly. So, it seems like the community can't even agree on which abstractions are zero cost (or maybe whether some zero cost abstractions are actually zero cost?). To the extent that the community itself has no consensus about these things, maybe they're not a marketing slogan that's helpful to use.