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A comment on No Semicolons Needed.

Re:No Semicolons Needed by DaleBiagio on Thursday March 19, 2026 @11:33AM (#47441205)
ALGOL (1960) used semicolons as separators. C made them terminators.

Every language since has had to pick a side, and "optional" always turns out to be the hardest choice.

JavaScript's ASI is what happens when a 10 day language has to live with a quick pragmatic decision for 30 years.

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Re:No Semicolons Needed by vincent-manis on Thursday March 19, 2026 @05:44PM (#47446691)
C was following PL/I.
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Re:No Semicolons Needed by DaleBiagio on Friday March 20, 2026 @05:22AM (#47452288)
Good catch, PL/I got there first. The lineage is ALGOL (separators) → PL/I (terminators) → C (terminators).

C gets the credit because it won the adoption war, but the decision was IBM's before it was Ritchie's.

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