Because resumption wasn't actually necessary for such a context inquiry, they removed it and found a significant speed increase in that part of the system. s/r

Because resumption wasn't actually necessary for such a context inquiry, they removed it and found a significant speed increase in that part of the system. s/resumption/exceptions/ and you have a secret to performance in Java. If this is the core reason for termination-only exceptions in C++, Stroustrup made a huge mistake: he presumed that the best exception handling for mature, stable code was the best exception handing for all code. But then he also threw in a lot of features that cripple the language from ever being able to create truly mature, stable code (see http://www.250bpm.com/blog:4 http://www.250bpm.com/blog:4). Now the most stable, mature libraries are written in C. C++ exceptions are then unreachable code, and a properly optimized programmer will never use them.