IntelliJ makes a great job of continuing to parse a source file (for
preview warnings etc) despite errors in the file. In other words the
whole file doesn't light up red when there's a syntax error early on.
It appears as if it can't make sense of an expression it sets it to
'null' and soldiers on.

When I'm working on a very large codebase, I'd like a compiler that
did the same. That allowed me to run a program despite a compile error
or two. Think of it as 'errors as warnings' as opposed to 'warnings as
errors'. If the execution reached a part of the program that couldn't
compile, it's translated to a runtime error.

Why would I want to run a broken program? Isn't that the antithesis of
the view that any red flags as to problems should be raised as soon as
possible?

Well, it might be that the compile error was caused by another
programmer, in a part of the program I rarely execute. Then I'd like
to get on with my work while he fixes it.

It might be that I made a mistake that caused one build error and two
test errors. If I can run the tests, those errors might be informative
to me.

Maybe I'd like as much information as possible from my continuous
integration server, rather than it throwing in the towel before the
tests, because one function won't compile.

I would never suggest part-broken code should be published or
deployed, but I think occasionally it could be a useful productivity
and debugging aid.

Is this a concept that has been tried?

Jim

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