I rather see people writing decent code that tries to recover and do the right thing.

Personally I do mix exceptions and return values depending on the module and script (not quite as chaotic as it sounds :) - I've certainly found that a fairly judicial use of exceptions can clean code up no end, and the less code I write, the less chance for error.

I've built a few larger applications/modules around Exception::Class, and I'd hate to try to re-implement them checking every return value, but as I said in an earlier post, I always found exceptions in Java a pain in the **** for the reasons you've stated.

As for P6 - who knows? Every time I read (or try to read) an appocalypse I feel worried, but then Damian usually manages to make it all sound ok. The only thing I've seen so far that sounds terrible is whitespace determining how a method is called - P6 should definitely absorb some of Pythons better features, but I'd prefer it if they left whitespace the hell alone :)