No discussion of Exceptions vs Error codes is complete without referring to Joel Spolsky's Exceptions article: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2003/10/13.h

No discussion of Exceptions vs Error codes is complete without referring to Joel Spolsky's Exceptions article: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2003/10/13.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2003/10/13.html Also: http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/Charles/Erik-Meijer-and-Robert-Griesemer-Go http://channel9.msdn.com/Blogs/Charles/Erik-Meijer-and-Rober... Erik Meijer interviews Robert Griesemer about Go. They chat about exceptions for error codes. The exception talk starts ~8:00. Erik is in favor of failing fast with exceptions b/c most of the time, when you have an exception in an application, you want to fail fast because there is "nothing you can do" at the point where you have an unexpected null, etc. Very interesting discussion between two smart guys.