Improving Compiler Error Messages

[Jeff Nowakowski]

On 05/02/2010 05:51 AM, bearophile wrote:
>
> You have also to take into account the time wasted in D programming adding semicolons when the compiler shows you errors caused by their absence :-)

Quoted for truth.

> Some of the languages developed in the last years seems to not agree with you, Scala and Go seem to avoid semicolons.

Scala's implicit semicolons aren't without problems. There have been 
several posts on the issue. Here's an example: 
http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.scala.debate/1134

"As a scala newbie I find the implicit semi-colon rules in scala more a 
hinderance than a help.  Being a believer in the 80-column rule I find 
myself often pondering "where can I break this line without the compiler 
thinking I'm trying to imply a semi-colon?" This is not an easy question 
to answer for one new to the language.  Particularly when said language 
already has a complex syntax due to diverse minimization rules."


> In a program most lines of code end at the newlines, so to reduce typing and errors it's a good idea to swap the syntax: instead of adding an explicit syntax to end lines (semicolon) it's better to introduce a line continuation (like \ in Python).

Makes sense to me.