> build a fort to deflect the random exceptions they'll throw at you

Sounds like you hate exceptions, right? In which case why do you handle them at all? Just leave them all unhandled and suddenly every exception is a crash. Which is really no different from someone choosing to terminate. Which you have to worry about even without exceptions.

> if you have a C++ code base yet somehow have enough time and energy to write opinionated blog posts, it's really hard to imagine why you think you'd have a better take on this than Google.

"Given that Google's existing code is not exception-tolerant [...] Our advice against using exceptions is not predicated on philosophical or moral grounds, but practical ones. [...] Things would probably be different if we had to do it all over again from scratch."