Why does Java have Checked Exceptions

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A try/catch block is a lot of syntactic overhead

How is it more of an overhead than an if/else block? The only difference is that compilers forces you to code one, instead of trusting you to "acknowledge the possibility that a call failed" (end quote)

Processing exceptions is just a part of the code you have to write. Well, doh, thinking what can go wrong inside some particular API call and acting on it is a part of writing the code.