Comment by ef4

The V8 performance issue with try/catch is widely misunderstood, and it causes people to unnecessarily avoid using it.

try/catch can slow down code in the same function as the try/catch statements. But it doesn't slow down any other function called from within there. In other words, it only affects the stack frame at which the try/catch statement actually appears.

So if you have some top level error trapping function like:

    errorCatcher = function(continuation){
      try {
        continuation();
      catch(err){
        reportErrorToServer(err);
      }
    }

and you only call it once at every entry point to your code, the impact will be totally undetectable, because there's only a single function invocation within the unoptimizable area.

I encourage people to performance test the difference caused by try/catch like this. You'll see that it doesn't hurt at all. It's only a problem if you actually write a try statement within some tight inner-loop function.