Defaults matter. Exceptions give me the question whether I want to worry about this piece of code here, or just go on and be reminded that it is actually important at runtime with an unmissable runtime error which has exact character number for the origin of the mistake. Even Java’s checked exceptions can be just added to the method signature.

(Ab)using Result types without good syntax for dealing with the very common case of “handle it higher up” (Rust’s ? macro is ok, not perfect but it is a much better compromise) is coming from a wrong angle imo.