Easier to parse is not only good for the compiler. There is lots of other stuff, which needs to parse a language: syntax highlighting, style checker, reformatter, static program analysis, automatic refactoring. Some simple syntax changes makes it tremendously easier to develop all these tools.

C++ is known for being really hard to parse. Rumors say there is no complete C++ compiler so far. Java avoided those pitfalls. As a result you can see that Java has much better IDE support (e.g. refactoring) than C++.