Paleographers have a whole catalog of scribal errors, which can be useful when trying to reconstruct a text from conflicting extant copies. Perhaps it would be helpful to compile such a list of common programming errors, and consider that list when designing a new language. It would include "scribal" errors like Apple's goto or = vs ==, and also low-level logical errors. It seems like this could make a fun paper for any CS grad students out there.
There are such lists, and compilers do generate warnings when you use a construct in it. Most of the problems is with people ignoring warnings.
But then, once in a while you have an example of bugs being inserted because the right construct was one that generated warnings. The Debian SSH bug is quite a clear example.
That's a good point. I'm thinking more about 10-20 categories of language-agnostic error rather than hundreds of language-specific errors. And there may still be scope for a paper that explicitly examines the paleography lists for inspiration. Yay multidisciplinary research! :-) But it's nice to think that such a paper might have applications not just in language design but also compiler warnings, which certainly seems more practical/realistic.
GCC has this, you turn it on by appending "-pedantic -Wall" to the compiler invocation. Sadly, many people don't know about it or care enough to use it.
