Get the latest tech news

The origin and virtues of semicolons in programming languages

Monday, April 15, 2024 While working on the grammar for my programming language, Lilac, I was exploring different choices for statement terminators. .

Some early input devices were adapted from Remington keyboards, and those (based on the pictures I can find) did include a semicolon and colon. Being on the home row makes it super easy to type, so in contrast to something like!, which requires two keystrokes and a stretch, you can get a; with just your right pinky. One of the jobs of the semicolon in English is to delimit independent clauses; these are parts of a sentence which could stand alone but are closely related.

Get the Android app