[m0th87]

> The advantage of rusts error handling is that it is explicit. The compiler knows that a function might result in an error and forces the programmer to deal with it, or pass it along.

Checked exceptions are explicit as well, though I'm not aware of a language that _only_ has checked exceptions.

> I also suspect that there might be a performance benefit but I could be completely wrong about that

Yes, this is a big advantage. Stack unwinding is very expensive.