Why exceptions for error handling is so important

[via Digitalmars-d]

On Monday, 12 January 2015 at 19:27:34 UTC, Russel Winder via 
Digitalmars-d wrote:
>
> On Mon, 2015-01-12 at 09:54 -0800, H. S. Teoh via Digitalmars-d 
> wrote:
>> 
> […]
>> Yeah, exceptions are supposed to be ... well, *exceptions*, 
>> rather than the norm. :-) If you're using exceptions to do 
>> flow control, you're doing something wrong.
>> 
> […]
>
> Unless you are writing Python code.

You are doing Python a disservice here. Their use of exceptions 
for control flow statements is an implementation detail, 
introduced because Python exceptions are fast. (In the C runtime 
a Python exception is a global variable and functions that return 
0;. ) The whole argument stands on its head.

The discussion of good Python coding style and Python's 
usefulness might be found elsewhere.