[enriquto]

> presume that, despite not being able to know all exceptions to handle in advance, you somehow have knowledge of all error conditions in the event that you're using error codes?

I guess that it is indeed the case. If you call one function, you can read the documentation of said function and read about its return values, including error codes. This specification cannot not change if one of the libraries nested deep within this function is replaced. However, with exceptions, if you use a new implementation of a deeply nested function it may raise a new exception that nobody was aware of at the time of writing the outermost functions.