Even if you really really like error return codes and really really don't like exceptions, you'll likely agree that writing very un-idiomatic code that goes against the grain of the language and all the libraries you might be using is likely a much bigger loss than the value you might have added by avoiding exceptions in your part of the block.

Out of curiosity, in what languages are error return types non-idiomatic?

This isn't to say the idioms are never broken or that they shouldn't be broken. I agree that if you are doing something like parsing a string to an integer, that should probably be a result type and not just throw an exception.

In languages like Java an Python, you can return error values but because you can also always return nulls, you're just making more trouble for yourself than it's worth avoiding exceptions.

It is not easy to stay away from exceptions if your language supports them.