title: Which, and why, do you prefer Exceptions or Return codes?
body: <p>My question is what do most developers prefer for error handling, Exceptions or Error Return Codes. Please be language(or language family) specific and why you prefer one over the other.</p>
  
  <p>I'm asking this out of curiosity. Personally I prefer Error Return Codes since they are less explosive and don't force user code to pay the exception performance penalty if they don't want to.</p>
  
  <p>update: thanks for all the answers! I must say that although I dislike the unpredictability of code flow with exceptions. The answer about return code (and their elder brother handles) do add lots of Noise to the code.</p>