Discussion on Exception Handling

What does /prog/ think of exception handling, as opposed to other methods such as return values or a global error variable/object? Personally, I think that exceptions in languages like C++ and Java have really introduced a much better method of handling errors that is language-independent. It makes your code infinitely more concise and readable, and now your errors actually have meaning beyond 0, "", null, etc.

I'm in my first year of computer programming at a local university, and we're just learning about exceptions now. It was like the world opened up; I couldn't believe how I could have accomplished anything before this, not knowing about exception handling. Never again will I have to use archaic methods of error handling.

Exceptions are just glorified gotos.

int func(void)
{
    if(!do_some_stuff()) {
        goto exception; // throw exception;
    }
    do_stuff_if_successful();
    return result;

exception: // catch exception before returning
    clean_up();
    return error; // just to signal, don't leave cleanup to caller
}

By the way, the above is probably the only acceptable use of goto.