[notacoward]

> I can't imagine writing Python without try blocks...

In other words, Python requires that model, but making something necessary isn't the same as it being good. If you go around breaking people's arms then splints and casts become necessary. Does that make arm-breaking OK?

> It allows you think about the problem with a much smaller cognitive load.

There's a very fine line between "smaller cognitive load" and "sweeping stuff under the rug". Since you mentioned Python, I'll point out that a lot of Python code only looks simple because it's incomplete and will fail catastrophically for what should be innocuous errors. Add the proper error handling and it's just as complex as code using an error-return or optional-type model. Often that means even more cognitive load because the happy path and the handlers are in multiple methods/classes/files (especially likely as multiple people hack on code over time).