LinuxPLC Project from the Automation List dept. You have a great point. A compiler will scan your complete program for syntax errors and report them at compile time. An interpreter will generally only test code when it executes. I have been burned in VB by a line of code that I never tested which caused the program to abort.
Some interpreters do have syntax checking programs.
I have never tried them, I assume that they help. VB has an option to test all code at the beginning of runtime, I recommend checking that option. I'm not convinced that compiled code is intrinsically any less prone to bugs and errors than interpreted. This tends to rule out conditional jumps, and increases the amount of code to run, but sometimes it's worth it. This can apply regardless of whether the language is compiled or interpreted.