probably faster since it was built for this purpose, throwing an error would have to at least create an exception object, then create stack trace and the other

probably faster since it was built for this purpose, throwing an error would have to at least create an exception object, then create stack trace and the other setup stuff. As i said I code for almost 20 years and I only had to use it once so far, but people that maybe work a lot more with stuff that needs a lot of performance might use it much more often.