Semicolons: mostly unnecessary?

[AJ]

"Steven Schveighoffer" <schveiguy at yahoo.com> wrote in message 
news:op.u159p8uaeav7ka at localhost.localdomain...
> On Wed, 21 Oct 2009 18:05:04 -0400, AJ <aj at nospam.net> wrote:
>
>> Why not eliminate the requirement for semicolon statement terminators
>> (unless there are multiple statements per line)? Less typing is "more"!
>
> It has been said in the past that having semicolons makes parsing easier. 
> I don't know how true this is, but Walter said it, so it probably is 
> pretty important.

Walter, do you write at all? If so, why not take a breather and write an 
article about this, given that you have direct experience in addition to 
opinion on the topic? :)

>
> You also forget about statements that span multiple lines, functions with 
> 15 args are much easier to read when they are separated into multiple 
> lines IMO.

They are the exception though. So it would make more sense to require 
something for the exceptional case (in this case, a line continuation 
character) rather than imposing on the common case with semicolons.

>
> To all those guys who want no semicolons: get over it.

Oh, I thought I was on to something novel!

> Use another  language if you don't want semicolons.  There are some out 
> there.  D isn't  going to to change one of it's most fundamental 
> constructs because it's  "less typing".

Well it's more than "less typing". The biggest boon is time to comprehend 
(the mind can parse less symbols faster). Semicolons may be like that page 
that is a photocopy of a photocopy of a photocopy... the result is a page 
with many extraneous marks having nothing to add to, and even DISTRACTS 
from, the comprehensibility of the message text on the page.

And does EVERY itsy-bitsy thread have to be about D (or D 2009 vs. DDD 
2020)? Can't general language design issues be discussed here and be 
useful/interesting? I wasn't proposing changing D, but rather trying to find 
the rationale for semicolons (i.e., Would I have chosen that if I was 
creating a language?).