Why can IntelliJ detect missing semi-colons and Java compiler can't?

Question

I was wondering why that's the case. How and why IntelliJ is able to detect missing semi-colons and Java compiler can't? Is there a case where IntelliJ is wrong and there is no way to actually detect missing semicolon? I read similar question discussing C and C++, there are pointers which complicate things, but Java seems simpler in that matter.

Answer 1

I would like to challenge your premise that a Java compiler cannot detect missing semicolons. I just tried to compile the following code with javac from Oracle JDK 8, and it is perfectly able to detect the missing semicolon:

public class Test {
  public static void main(String... args) {
    System.out.println()
  }
}

The compiler error printed is the following:

Test.java:3: error: ';' expected
    System.out.println()
                        ^
1 error

As you can see, it not only detected the missing semicolon, it was even able to point out exactly where it was missing.