Poll: Semicolons in JavaScript

To begin with readability, i'm pretty sure that programmers are capable of working out the end of a line without the use of a semicolon: Scala has no such requirement of semicolons. Surely, the best way to ensure readability is, like in spoken language, to use common terms and expressions. Finding the obscure uses of the language to ensure the forceful requirement of a semicolon just seems petty and unhelpful. It is the equivalent of being overly prolix within a natural language, therefore limiting the ability to communicate.

The elimination of random bugs is a little more tricky to discern. Sure, there are occasional issues that can be caused by the lack of semicolons, for example (taken from the quoted text):

a = b + c (d + e).print()

But let's face it, if you're writing your javascript like that then you probably need to re-evaluate the your use of (d + e). After all, the majority of browsers now use javascript compilers that are more than capable of constant folding. Therefore meaning that:

a = b + c var f = d + e f.print()

should therefore be no less efficient and, on the side of readability, you could even name f to be something worthwhile.

The best minifiers (YUI and Google's Closure Compiler) are perfectly capable of minifying javascript without semicolons. If your minifier is having issues because you haven't inserted a semicolon, then—obviously—it's not doing its job properly.

In my writing of javascript, I very rarely use semicolons and the issues described have never come up. Often the expressions given as to why it is necessary are extreme and obscure to the point whereby using those expressions may not be the best policy. I'm not advocating the idea of never using semicolons (something i pretty much do), I'm just saying that the requirement for constant use is pointless.

It's none of your business how I choose to code my own projects.

If we're on the same project together, we can discuss it and decide on a style that works for everyone.

When I contribute to an OpenSource project, I adopt whatever style they have defined.

For my own projects, I have personally opted out of using unnecessary semicolons and brackets unless they improve maintainability or readability. But you don't have to know or care about that.

This is a really nice example of that.

It also is reminiscent of one of my favourite programming jokes:

   int x;
   int y;

   x = 0; /* initialise both x 
   y = 0;    and y to 0 */

return { a : true }

and

return { a : true }

are different and can cause many problems.