why ; ?

[Yigal Chripun]

BCS wrote:
> Reply to Bruno,
> 
>> Yigal Chripun wrote:
>>
>>> PS: it's amazing how such smart people can waste so much time and
>>> energy debating such unimportant issues as the semicolon at the end
>>> of statements with such a passion.
>>>
>> Also known as the bikeshed problem
>> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_of_the_bikeshed) :)
>>
> 
> The only usable solution is the define the language is such a way that
> there is exactly one correct way to format code. That way must be so bad
> that absolutely no one will even try to edit it without a pretty printer
> (and an ugly printer to go back the other way) That way everyone is
> unhappy with the actual files but no one cares because then never see it.
> 

personally I don't understand why we still use text files to represent
code. that's just so silly. data in a computer is stored in binary form
not text, so you don't get to see your "real" code anyway, but rather a
specific interpretation of it. and this encoding is very old and very
simplistic. this is identical to word for example only difference is the
format used by word is a different binary encoding.

there is a programming language where you use pixels and colors to
program and you can actually create pretty code. imagine your source
code looks like a butterfly, for example. there are some mostly academic
languages that use math extensivly and thus rely on latex for syntax.
I'm sure that there are endless possibilities of richer representations
of code than just text.

in star-trek when they need to "program" the holo-deck or the machine
that creates food (darn, I forgot the name of it) they simply explain to
the computer what they actually want. no need for a formal language at
all. there's an episode in star-trek TNG where they unfreeze someone in
a space shuttle which was frozen since the 20th century. since in the
Utopian earth in the future they don't have alcohol nor anything
unhealthy like coca-cola, he tries to program that machine to create
coke, and it takes a while since he didn't know how to explain what a
coke is. (he had much better luck with whiskey, though ;) )

and with all those endless possibilities, we still spend time arguing
the semi-colon?! doesn't it look silly, in comparison?

D is already years ahead of many other languages, simple by using
Unicode instead of ASCII. wouldn't it be cool to have a voice
recognition compiler for D too? ;)