I dislike exceptions, because they are magic. You can't tell what exceptions the piece of code you're calling will throw. It can also easily change with a library upgrade.

I like exceptions, because they are magic. While prototyping or for small utilities it's perfectly OK to "crash" on any error - nice error message can help then.

However I prefer when the final version handles all errors explicitly. I want to see it documented in code that error handling was not forgotten and it was deliberate to push certain errors back the stack. Of course it can work with documentation telling that this library never catches any errors, but it will put the burden on me. I also prefer to have a code, because documentation, more often then not, is lying.

Having written all that, I'm wondering how exceptions work with Python's "Explicit is better than implicit". I guess in case of exceptions this rule has lower priority than some other rule that priorities simple looking code. That would align with my use of Python - strictly for one off utils and prototypes.