Terry Tao has a blog post about these "compilation errors":

    However, when, as a graduate student, one encounters the task of
    reading a technical mathematical paper for the first time, it is
    often the case that one loses much of one's higher reading skills,
    reverting instead to a more formal and tedious line-by-line
    interpretation of the text. As a consequence, a single typo or
    undefined term in the paper can cause one's comprehension of the
    paper to grind to a complete halt, in much the same way that it
    would to a computer.

https://plus.google.com/+TerenceTao27/posts/TGjjJPUdJjk

There's more context here:

https://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/there%E2%80%99s...