If I may add emphasis... GCC's error messages were a HUGE improvement over existing compilers. Back in 1985, C compilers might tell you what line the error wa

If I may add emphasis... GCC's error messages were a HUGE improvement over existing compilers. Back in 1985, C compilers might tell you what line the error was on, but they also might not. GCC went further, revealing not only the line number but added a carat pointing to the precise term in the source code that was the source of the error. This was a godsend. In addition GCC's error messages were human readable. Unlike Microsoft, whose compilers and interpreters had long produced only line numbers and error codes, GCC wrote their messages in English, which were sometimes tuned further to fit the syntax. At the time, all this was a really big advancement over non-IDE compilers (which then died a thousand deaths when the cfront translator and then OOP's general lugubriousness made error messages illegible once again).