Why? It's a good grammatical equivalent to the full stop for the programmer. It can serve as useful context for the compiler. And it's only one character. Antagonism over semicolons is another strange symptom of conciseness at all costs. If you want APL, just use APL.

▲

ginko 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

I always thought ending programming statements with a period '.' like in Prolog was more elegant.

▲

robertlagrant 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> If you want APL, just use APL.

Or Python, Go, or Typescript.

▲

mojuba 3 days ago | parent [-]

Or Swift

	▲	tromp 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		or Haskell

▲

pacifika 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

A counter argument is It’s meaningless for the developer and high level programming is writing for people not things.

	▲	withinboredom 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		That’s why when we write, we use commas and periods. It tells the reader when a thought ends and the next begins. A semi-colon is the traditional period in programming. Not everything fits on one line. Python managed to pull it off and now everyone thinks it’s the right way… it’s just “a way” but by no means modern or right. JavaScript made them optional, but it results in ambiguous parsing sometimes, so it’s not a good idea there either. In any case, I doubt a run on sentence is “meaningless” but it is hard to parse.