Try/Catch

What is the point of using Try/Catch in the file loaders? All this seems to do is mask the source of any error that occurs.

You use them to stop your program bombing out.

For example your program reads/writes to files and you want to guarantee that it's safe to do so then use Try / Catch. This way if it's not safe to do it your program won't freak and instead you can display a nice "can not do this" info box.

Very usefull when reading from internet or removable devices.

I would think the point is to just catch the exception so you can do something more constructive with it.

I have a question about try/catch. When I use it in debug mode it seems to work just fine, it catches the exception (trying to load an invaild image) and goes on with life. However, if I build only the GUI App (disable quick build and debug build) it seems to ignore the try/catch block. Is this intended? What can I do in its place?

It does not needfully ignore it.
Perhaps just the exception is not thrown anymore (file io for example when I remember correctly).
As well the thrown exceptions won't cause runtime errors anymore if not catched.

Some exceptions only get thrown in debug mode.

Namely those thrown by Assert.