I come from science, so heavy scientific computing bias here.
I think you’re largely focusing on the wrong metric. Whether exceptions should be thrown has little to do with reliability (and indeed, exceptions can be detrimental to reliability), but instead is more related to correctness. They are not always the same thing. In a scientific computing context, for example, a program can be unreliable, with memory leaks resulting in processes often being killed by the OS, but still always give correct results when a computation actually manages to finish.
If you need a strong guarantee of correctness, then this is quite important. I’m not so sure that this is always the case in machine learning, since ML models by their nature can usually train around various deficiencies; with small implementation mistakes you might just be a little confused as to why your model performs worse than expected. In aerospace, correctness needs to balanced against aeroplanes suddenly losing power, so correctness always doesn’t always win. In scientific computing you might have the other extreme, where there’s very little riding on your program not exiting, since you can always do a bunch of test runs before sending your code off to a HPC cluster, but if you do run this thing and base a whole bunch of science off of it it better not be ruined by little insidious bugs. I can imagine correctness mattering a lot too in crypto and security contexts, where a bug might cause information to leak and it is probably better for your program to die from internal checks than for your private key to be leaked.
I’m not sure if I agree that a job poorly-done is worse than one not even started.
I think this is definitely highly context-dependent. A scientific result that is wrong is far worse than the lack of a result at all, because this gives a false sense of confidence, allowing for research to be built on wrong results, or for large amounts of research personpower to be wasted on research ideas/directions that depend on this wrong result. False confidence can be very detrimental in many cases.
As to why general purpose languages usually involve error handling and errors: they are general purpose languages and have to cater to use cases where you do care about errors. Built-in routines fail with exceptions rather than silently so that people building mission-critical code where correctness is the most important metric can at least kinda trust every language built-in routine to return correct results if it manages to return something successfully.
Edit: some grammatical stuff and clarity
The way the term ‘consumerism’ is used in your quote in the first bit does not seem to be the usual usage, so it feels a lot like equivocation to me. Consumerism is not consumption. Consumerism is not even just buying stuff that serves no purpose other than to make your life better. Consumerism is specifically buying frivolous stuff. Because of that, the first two paragraphs seems like useless window-dressing to me. No one is arguing that consumption is bad, I just ate lunch and it was delicious, now let’s move on from that strawman.
With regards to frivolous consumption, there is a problem with regards to the definition of frivolous. I think the best way to think about this is to recognise that human wants and desires are quite malleable. Because of this, things that don’t actually materially improve your life (eg. give you a good chance of living longer, free up significant portions of time, etc.) and instead are purchased primarily because buying the item gives a burst of pleasure, are fundamentally useless. Sure, having this item makes you happier, but so does just about any action that you can convince yourself is valuable. An example of such an item might be a fancy branded mechanical keyboard with just the right switches. There is no fundamental reason why such a keyboard would make me happier than, say, spending some quality time with my family, even though personally I do desire such items. The assumption in your quote is that frivolous purchases still provide conveniences, but I would argue many items really really don’t! Buying a new iPhone every time your contract expires does not provide any new convenience over, say, a battery swap. You might be able to have fun playing with new games, or features, but I had way more fun playing PS2 games with my friends decades ago than I have on any modern phone game; it really doesn’t matter. Neither do mechanical keyboards; if anything, the longer travel distance might worsen RSIs.
It is also important to recognise that due to the hedonic treadmill, you don’t derive long-term enjoyment from buying things. After a while you get used to it; losing the item would bring you sadness, but the continued existence of the item no longer brings joy. Because of that, buying a durable item (eg. fancy keyboard) is actually far more similar to activities that bring transient enjoyment (hanging out with people) than one might imagine.
Now, if there are no negative externalities, none of this would matter. After all, the universe is cold and uncaring, why not have some fun, etc. However, there are. I mean, there’s basically the whole climate thing going on, and the whole microplastics things, and producing more stuff has costs to society as a whole. However, even if we ignore that, if we zoom out a bit, there are costs. Society as a whole as some maximum level of productivity given by our total amount of technology, labour and human capital, land, and actual capital (eg. accumulated machinery, etc.). The more of this productivity is directed towards producing useless shit, the less we can direct towards actually making the world better, advancing technology, helping people, etc. Because of this, I strongly believe that if there is any consumption that provides utility that can be equivalently substituted by non-consumption, that consumption is a net negative for society. This is not to say I am a magical person of magical will-power. I buy shit that’s useless. However, I recognise that I bought a thing that brings be less joy and wonder than a walk through the park after a spring shower, and maybe I should remind myself to do that more often.