I've never gotten the explicit argument. Java checked exceptions are also part of the function signature/interface and nothing prevents one from making a language where all exceptions are checked then just doing

    try {
       maybeError := FunctionThrowingValueError()
    } catch (ValueError e) {
       // do stuff
    }

I get at the end of the day it's all semantics, but personally I kinda like the error-specific syntax. If you want to do the normal return path, that's fine, but I prefer the semantics of Rust's Result type (EITHER a result OR an error may be set).

To each their own, it's not something I really worry about.