[branko_d]

Sure, but the same is true of any error handling strategy.

When you work with exceptions, the key is to assume that every line can throw unless proven otherwise, which in practice means almost all lines of code can throw. Once you adopt that mental model, things get easier.

[frumplestlatz]

Explicit error handling strategies allow you to not worry about all the code paths that explicitly cannot throw -- which is a lot of them. It makes life a lot easier in the non-throwing case, and doesn't complicate life any more in the throwing case as compared to exception-based error handling.

It also makes errors part of the API contract, which is where they belong, because they are.

[branko_d]

I would respectfully disagree with most of what you said. I guess individual perspective depends a lot on the kinds of code you work on.

The point about being explicitly part of the API stands, though.