4 ms·

Just one of those things that no one really questions the existence of. It, like the semicolon, always has been and will be. Good work digging through these hi

by LC_ALL 6y ago

Just one of those things that no one really questions the existence of. It, like the semicolon, always has been and will be. Good work digging through these historic esoteric languages. Wikipedia states McCarthy of Lisp fame invented it so many of the evangelists here likely know the conclusion here.

Someone 6y ago
“It, like the semicolon, always has been and will be.” Not the best of examples. It hasn’t always been. Early fortran and lisp didn’t have it. Reading https://medium.com/better-programming/a-brief-history-of-the-8efda9dde2b8 https://medium.com/better-programming/a-brief-history-of-the..., it seems Algol and PL/I set the trend to make it popular. Looking at newer languages, I also get the impression it’s on the way out. Rust has them, but python, scala, go and swift try to avoid them (https://python-reference.readthedocs.io/en/latest/docs/operators/semicolon.html https://python-reference.readthedocs.io/en/latest/docs/opera...: “Avoid having multiple statements on a single line. Though the language definition allows one to use a semi-colon to delineate statements, doing so without reason makes one’s code harder to read”, https://golang.org/doc/effective_go.html#semicolons https://golang.org/doc/effective_go.html#semicolons: “Like C, Go's formal grammar uses semicolons to terminate statements, but unlike in C, those semicolons do not appear in the source. Instead the lexer uses a simple rule to insert semicolons automatically as it scans, so the input text is mostly free of them.”, https://docs.swift.org/swift-book/LanguageGuide/TheBasics.html#ID316 https://docs.swift.org/swift-book/LanguageGuide/TheBasics.ht...: “Unlike many other languages, Swift doesn’t require you to write a semicolon (;) after each statement in your code, although you can do so if you wish. However, semicolons are required if you want to write multiple separate statements on a single line”)
- enf 6y ago
  Semicolons came in with Algol 58 too, which used them in what now seems like a really excessive way.

by LC_ALL 6y ago

Someone 6y ago

“It, like the semicolon, always has been and will be.” Not the best of examples. It hasn’t always been. Early fortran and lisp didn’t have it. Reading https://medium.com/better-programming/a-brief-history-of-the-8efda9dde2b8 https://medium.com/better-programming/a-brief-history-of-the..., it seems Algol and PL/I set the trend to make it popular. Looking at newer languages, I also get the impression it’s on the way out. Rust has them, but python, scala, go and swift try to avoid them (https://python-reference.readthedocs.io/en/latest/docs/operators/semicolon.html https://python-reference.readthedocs.io/en/latest/docs/opera...: “Avoid having multiple statements on a single line. Though the language definition allows one to use a semi-colon to delineate statements, doing so without reason makes one’s code harder to read”, https://golang.org/doc/effective_go.html#semicolons https://golang.org/doc/effective_go.html#semicolons: “Like C, Go's formal grammar uses semicolons to terminate statements, but unlike in C, those semicolons do not appear in the source. Instead the lexer uses a simple rule to insert semicolons automatically as it scans, so the input text is mostly free of them.”, https://docs.swift.org/swift-book/LanguageGuide/TheBasics.html#ID316 https://docs.swift.org/swift-book/LanguageGuide/TheBasics.ht...: “Unlike many other languages, Swift doesn’t require you to write a semicolon (;) after each statement in your code, although you can do so if you wish. However, semicolons are required if you want to write multiple separate statements on a single line”)

enf 6y ago
Semicolons came in with Algol 58 too, which used them in what now seems like a really excessive way.