If you (rightly) preserve code’s sensitivity to alteration for the sake of the computer, then you also have a responsibility to offer clear diagnostics to the programmer. Clang gets this right: people make mistakes, and often they’re hard to spot—no need to make it harder!
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No kidding!
On a related note, it's always fun to demonstrate code's sensitivity to minor alterations to a non-technical person and see their reactions.
For example, just remove a semi-colon from a random PHP file that gets included in your web app and watch it completely die.
It's a decent way to impress upon people with little technical knowledge the importance of debugging.
(bonus points if you can create an impressive runtime bug that mangles the code's functionality in a flashy way, think mis-spelled variables in PHP)
If you (rightly) preserve code’s sensitivity to alteration for the sake of the computer, then you also have a responsibility to offer clear diagnostics to the programmer. Clang gets this right: people make mistakes, and often they’re hard to spot—no need to make it harder!