raises, throws, & exits. rescue vs catch. as for binary vs charlist, some dependencies wanted binary, others wanted charlist. faced with the choice of re-write the dependency to use binaries, or wrap it with pre/post converters, we chose the latter. after the third or fourth global search-and-replace thanks to elixir's renaming of built-ins just for the hell of it, we re-wrote it in go, and never looked back.