Best way to return status flag and message from a method in Java

Question

I have a deceptively simple scenario, and I want a simple solution, but it\'s not obvious which is \"most correct\" or \"most Java\".

Let\'s say I have a small authe

Answer 1

Just because failed authentication is commonplace doesn't mean it isn't exceptional.

In my opinion, authentication failures are the poster-child use case for checked exceptions. (Well... maybe file non-existence is the canonical use case, but authentication failure is a close #2.)