[sasmithjr]

In my mind, the difference between errors-as-values and exceptions is most useful when describing domain-specific errors and other issues that you have to handle in support of the domain/problem space. To me, domain errors make sense as errors-as-values, but your database being unreachable is unrelated to the domain and makes sense as an exception.

> another example is where you are trying to fetch a file or database record that does not exist

I think this depends on whether or not you expect the file/record to exist. Handling a request from a user where the user provided the id used for lookup? The lookup itself is validation of the user input. But if you retrieved a DB record that has a blob name associated with it and your blob storage says that a blob doesn't exist by that name? I find that to be a great situation for an exception.

The errors-or-exception line is fuzzy and going to be dependent on your team and the problems you're solving, but I've found that it's a decent rule of thumb.