EINTR and longjmp can also surprise you, even in middle of calls, yet C doesn't have any exceptions.

You're right that the C language has many weird and wonderful capabilities and footguns. How does that address Chen's point about exceptions being unmanageable?

His point doesn't stand in any programming language that doesn't enforce error checking, exceptions or not, you will be surprised at any possible execution point if you don't check error values from previous call.

At least with exceptions you get a "I told you so" if something does happen, and a defined way to force application termination if the error isn't properly handled.

Given the remarks on the C++ post, I assume he belongs to the /EH- side of pitch forks and torches, which actually goes against the C++ best practices at Microsoft, https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/cpp/errors-and-exceptio..., which leaves a feeling of a kind of biased article in some way.