Blanket update:

I have been referring to try/catch error-handling, but have used the word "exception" as a synonym a couple times, and I think a couple other people have made the same assumption of synonymity in their replies.

Really, "exception" should be reserved to refer to things that "shouldn't happen", that we don't want to waste resources recovering from. In most languages, try/catch is exclusively for exceptions, and they are sometimes/always unchecked, but in Swift, try/catch is for plain errors, and the compiler forces you to handle them. This is a huge caveat, and a mistake on my part, that makes 50% of the conversation moot. I am only lauding try/catch error-handling, and checked i.e. enforced try/catch at that, but not exceptions.