This kind of argument also seems to miss something important: that exceptions (at least in C++, but this argument probably applies to other languages as well) a

This kind of argument also seems to miss something important: that exceptions (at least in C++, but this argument probably applies to other languages as well) aren't intended as a general-purpose error-handling mechanism, which return codes are perfectly adequate for. Exceptions are intended for unexpected conditions (i.e., exceptional) that must be handled somehow. In C++, this is pretty fundamental to the RAII idea.