You started it.... exceptions are mostly annoying because they are so verbose. Writing try... catch... is a whole lot longer than "if func() == null".

Exceptions are mostly annoying because they’re infectious, and somewhat undocumented (they’ve not part of the api; if an upstream library adds a new exception, all downstream code must now handle it [or document it]), and if anyone misses the update, its a runtime error waiting to happen. But notably, your compiler won’t say a word about it (unless its java, in which case you’ll probably get too much :-). Return codes are similar, but less cascade-y. Try-catch being verbose and fucking up control flow is just an added bonus.

Which is easier:

try: module.find_element() except: # handle not found else: # handle found

Or this:

if module.find_element(): # handle found else: # handle not found