In some contexts, exceptions are just cleaner and easier. Definitely. The question is, are the benefits in those contexts worth the cost of the potential abuse

In some contexts, exceptions are just cleaner and easier. Definitely. The question is, are the benefits in those contexts worth the cost of the potential abuses? As a codebase and company get larger and larger, the higher the probability that a problem will get into the codebase. There is an analogy here with C++ templates and with method_missing meta-programming. There are some contexts where they make things a lot easier. However, in a large codebase, the probability that some programmer, somewhere is going to cause a costly problem with a bit of nifty overreach goes up and up.