[VladRussian]

the compiler in many simple cases could have tried to repair the program, like attempting to insert(remove) missing(extra) ';' or '}' for example. While it may be not a malice, it is definitely an absence of a good will.

Note: i did work on a real product which had parser inside that had such style of repair implemented, and such approach is also quickly mentioned in the dragon book as well

[gridspy]

It's possible that such automatic repair would create a bug. Much safer to have a human check and ensure that the ; goes in the right place.

A better point is that the error messages from many compilers can be very obscure. This was particularly true 10-15 years ago.

[philwelch]

Yeah, if a compiler only compiles the code you actually wrote, it's still your fault. If a compiler tries to infer what you meant and compiles that instead, then it might genuinely be the compiler's fault when something breaks. Plus, the original code should still be fixed instead of relying on the compiler to compile the same broken code the same "right" way each time. We spent the last 20 years trying to convince web developers of that idea.

Clang does something like this. If it notices a simple enough syntax error that it can correct, it still generates the error message but it makes the correction internally and continues the compilation far enough to generate useful error messages about the rest of the code. But it doesn't output anything or change the code.