Evil semicolons

[Dani]

I asked ChatGPT to give me some interesting ideas for questions to ask here on DaniWeb, and one of the questions that it came up with was to ask if you've ever been personally victimized by a semicolon? OK, so I have a lot of questions about this. Firstly, why is personally italicized? Is it more common for semicolons to attack groups of people at a time? In what way do those evil semicolons choose their victims? And, thirdly, just how do they victimize? I'm quite perturbed.

[Reverend Jim]

I don't find them evil, just confusing. Some languages (C, C++) use them to end statements, some (ALGOL) use them to separate statements. I never really programmed in C++ but I did a fair bit of C and never really had a problem with them. All in all I prefer a language that does not use them.

[Dani]

All in all I prefer a language that does not use them.

I'm the opposite. In PHP, at least, using semi-colons to end a statement means that I don't have to be more cognizant of whitespace (spaces, tabs, and hard returns). In client-side javascript, not having to rely on whitespace means that I can minimize the file for much faster transport to the end-user.

[trcooke]

I've spent most of my career writing Java which uses the semicolon to signify the end of a statement. Using the auto-complete features of my IDE (IntelliJ, naturally) I very rarely actually have to type them out so they're not the burden that this topic implies that they are. In fact, using IDE auto-complete most of the Java I write I don't actually write at all, merely tab it out. I'm not even talking about the more recent AI based "guess what you're trying to do" features, just plain old language and context completion.

[rproffitt]

Many decades ago, before modern code editors, sure. I'm talking the 1980's here. Barely getting past the ASR 33 Teletype and punch card days. Get into 2000 and onwards and not so much a problem.