Ok, so what you did instead was to effectively put "throws Exception" on every method by default. That implicit throws clause was already there in any language

Ok, so what you did instead was to effectively put "throws Exception" on every method by default. That implicit throws clause was already there in any language that contains unchecked exceptions for things like dereferencing a null pointer, or assertions, etc. So, no, that's not what removing checked exceptions does. Personally, I'm a big fan of Guava's Throwables class. The java I write these days transmutes all checked exceptions into unchecked wrappers at any API boundary that tries to force them on me. And, no, this doesn't mean I'm only coding for the happy case. Rather, I'm choosing where and how to handle the sadness.