History: Exceptions In C Plus Plus

Why we don't use exceptions in our code

As told by Mike Shaver to Dave Liebreich, 5-Dec-2005

some of the reasons exceptions are not used are:

• problems with older compilers' implementation of exceptions. This reason will go away as we drop support for older compilers over time.
• problems with exceptions that have to cross boundaries between C, C++, and/or XPCOM.
• lots of the existing code is not exception-safe.

C++ templates are slowly being adopted, so it's not like we never use different stuff.