That's not true in java. You can gradually increase the granularity of unchecked exceptions using subtypes. For example I might initally have AnythingFailedDur

That's not true in java. You can gradually increase the granularity of unchecked exceptions using subtypes. For example I might initally have AnythingFailedDuringTheQueryException with a Subtype of QueryPreparationException. If I introduce new subclasses of QueryPreparationException to increase the precision of the error reporting, all existing catches for QueryPreparationException will still function as they did before. A "NotEnoughParametersException" subclass of a QueryPreparationError is still caught as a QueryPreparationError. Only if you introduce catches for the new more granular unchecked exception, your codes behavior changes to use the new behavior. That's a very clean way to improve error reporting in a backwards compatible way.