Comment by gleenn

I understand what you're saying about the potential annoyance or dissatisfaction with Java checked exceptions being effectively cast to Runtime ones. As a language choice, it made a signal by differentiating checked versus unchecked and at least gave user the opportunity to benefit from a choice witha nudge in the right direction. You always have to have the escape hatch, but making it less "affordable" to the user, they tend to do the right thing more often which sounds like a perfect win given the trade-offs.