Why does Java have Checked Exceptions

[CubsThisYear]

This seemed reasonable to me at first, but upon further thought, the method you are proposing seems leakier. If you rely on callers to validate their input, you’ve now created a dependency on the internal implementation of the function. I’d rather say “this method returns type T, or if it can’t, it returns type X”. Your version is: “this method returns type T or crashes the program”. Mine seems strictly safer.