Discussion on: How do you feel about braces and semicolons?

[Ben Halpern]

No braces and semicolons (I'm not actually sure anyone does this?)

Ruby has braces but are usually reserved for single-line declarations. This is the common block syntax.

@people.each do |person|
  person.say("hello")
end

if something
  do("something")
elsif something_else
  do("something else")
else
  do("nothing")
end

Ruby looks like Python but does not use significant whitespace. It's definitely an interesting case study for language syntax design.

[Joe Clay]

Ah, slightly confusing wording on my part - I meant 'no braces, yes semicolons' for that option :) Will rephrase that.

Either way, I really like Ruby's syntax! Lua has a similar thing going for it where it looks like a Python-ish language, but its grammar doesn't care about whitespace/line breaks.

[rhymes]

I also have the feeling that using a delimiter might be easier for designing a new language, might be wrong though.

Definitely no semicolons :P