> He makes the point that exceptions should be truly exceptional conditions
The comment did say that, but the only explanation of why exceptions should only be used that way seemed to be performance based. If that is not the issue, then what is? Saying "that's what they're for" without any other detail is a circular argument.
I explained how exceptions are implemented, and the actionable intelligence you can derive from that understanding (if perf matters to your code and/or scenario, then use exceptions only for hard errors, not for generic signaling).
If perf does not matter in your scenario, than obviously the guidance does not apply to you. To me that does not mean it's a waste of time to explain how exceptions work and what that means to performance critical code.
It is a circular argument. I for one I would use exceptions significantly more often if throwing and catching them were to be cheaper (also syntactically). As it is you often end up with both a throwing and optional-returning non-throwing variants of many functions.
The comment did say that, but the only explanation of why exceptions should only be used that way seemed to be performance based. If that is not the issue, then what is? Saying "that's what they're for" without any other detail is a circular argument.