Sure, if you're willing to create a sealed trait, and separate exception classes, for every function that wants to do this. What this really needs to be usable

Sure, if you're willing to create a sealed trait, and separate exception classes, for every function that wants to do this. What this really needs to be usable is union (sum) types So in this case: def dangerousFunction(): Either[FileNotFoundError | JsonParseError, Int] = { ??? } ...and looking for this online, it turns out this is a feature in the experimental Dotty compiler. Yay. And yeah, right-biased either would get halfway there. But it's really the terminology and naming that I have an issue. If I could get an Either knockoff that just called its left and right "error" and "success", that would go a long way to readability.