I do work in software performance. The people I know who don't use exceptions work at HFT firms and in games, but in general, my point is that there's two reas

I do work in software performance. The people I know who don't use exceptions work at HFT firms and in games, but in general, my point is that there's two reasons for not using exceptions: 1. performance 2. not wanting jumps or hidden control flow Note that with exceptions you're forced to consider C++ exception guarantees for code, which can result in convoluting your code to ensure specific guarantees are met (like using swap to ensure that containers retain previous values), which often gets ignored or implemented incorrectly. Also, with exception specifications being deprecated, you have to rely on documentation or reading code to understand what exceptions might be inherent in other code.