I don’t know if this helps or just makes it more unacceptable to you, but exceptions in Python is more of a second channel of communication between parts of programs.
Since messages in this channel propagates up the call stacks they are very handy to stop an application and therefore used for error handling.
But they can just as well be used for all sorts of other messaging. In base Python they are used to communicate that you’ve reached the end of an iteration.
If you’ve ever made a function that returns both a value and a status in as a tuple, chances are you are better off using exceptions to communicate the status, especially if there is a “stop” status.
This is true, that's exactly what exceptions are. One could argue (I would) that this is a very powerful part of Python, but the indeterminate nature of the exception (where is it coming from, how is it defined, what should I provide to my client) makes it easier to catch exceptions as they percolate upward, but more difficult to correctly know how to handle them (especially as the permutations approach infinity as underlying libraries get upgraded).
Golang actually has a back-channel communication path that is somewhat similar as a second channel of communications. (Actually they're called channels!) They're a first-class and extremely powerful feature of the language. You can even run a for loop over them, block or not block while waiting for an incoming message, etc.
Here's a great video that talks about use cases and the patterns in using them, and they pair great with goroutines (and you don't have to sprinkle async before every function, either): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6kdp27TYZs
Since messages in this channel propagates up the call stacks they are very handy to stop an application and therefore used for error handling.
But they can just as well be used for all sorts of other messaging. In base Python they are used to communicate that you’ve reached the end of an iteration.
If you’ve ever made a function that returns both a value and a status in as a tuple, chances are you are better off using exceptions to communicate the status, especially if there is a “stop” status.