I always wondered what's so great about exceptions, and was glad that I don't have to use them while coding PHP... Now Joel explains why he doesn't like them:

"I consider exceptions to be no better than "goto's", considered harmful since the 1960s, in that they create an abrupt jump from one point of code to another. In fact they are significantly worse than goto's:

• They are invisible in the source code
• They create too many possible exit points"