The melancholy decline of the semicolon • Hacker News Board

Re: The melancholy decline of the semicolon

#121

Post by NoSorryCannot » Sat, Nov 27, 2021, 4:13 PM UTC

dsr_ wrote: post #55

pwdisswordfish0 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the correct past tense of lead? I thought it was “led”, but I can’t remember having ever read any other form? What often irks me, as a non-native speaker, is the wrong subjunctive (if that’s what it’s called). People say and write all the time “I wish you were there”, when they mean “I wish you had been there”. At least I’m pretty sure that’s how it’s supposed to be…

Present: "He leads me to believe in grammatical rigor." Past: "She led me to that conclusion long ago." Past, growing popular but historically incorrect: "She lead me to that conclusion long ago." Noun: "I licked the sweet lead off the wall." Also noun: "After six rounds of chess-boxing-sprinting, it was not clear to either of the participants who had the lead." Also also popular but historically incorrect noun: "We…

This is spelling, not grammar. It's the same word, not a noun, spelled differently.

Re: The melancholy decline of the semicolon

#122

Post by soledades » Sat, Nov 27, 2021, 4:14 PM UTC

comeonseriously wrote: post #100

seoaeu wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t indent my code, my autoformatter does. It is way less effort to get the braces right and then have the indent level inferred automatically

Automated tools get in my way of thinking. I turn off intellisense, auto-formatters, etc... I'll run auto tools during check-in, but not during coding sessions.

No find and replace, either? ;)

Re: The melancholy decline of the semicolon

#123

Post by alpaca128 » Sat, Nov 27, 2021, 4:20 PM UTC

zuj wrote: post #77

Completely off topic but, after doing python for ages, recently started writing Rust and semicolon does seems useless. We are doing the indentation and new lines anyway, why not just make them as default language construct as python does. (autodidact developer here, feel free to ELI5 and enlighten me)

Python and Rust have two fundamentally different philosophies. Python is all about quick and intuitive programming and it's pretty good at that, though in turn you can get more kinds of bugs and runtime errors that could have been avoided with proper type checking and other measures.

Meanwhile Rust avoids any kind of behaviour that isn't clearly visible in the code. That includes unambiguous syntax, like the mandatory curly braces for loops and conditions. And of course the semicolon as a clear separator, which comes in handy when iterators or the builder pattern are used.

Re: The melancholy decline of the semicolon

#124

Post by magicalhippo » Sat, Nov 27, 2021, 4:23 PM UTC

im3w1l wrote: post #9

Sentence length has gone down a lot, it feels like. So really, the semicolon has not been replaced by the dash, but by the period.

In my native language classes I was always told by my teachers to try to make shorter sentences. If I do a second pass, I always delete words or split sentences into two.

Re: The melancholy decline of the semicolon

#125

Post by EMM_386 » Sat, Nov 27, 2021, 4:23 PM UTC

I find it interesting that I am using semicolons more these days because clients like my work Outlook recommend it in places I wouldn't use it but are correct; as a result, I use it more often.

Re: The melancholy decline of the semicolon

#126

Post by krisrm » Sat, Nov 27, 2021, 4:23 PM UTC

comeonseriously wrote: post #94

zuj wrote: post #77

Completely off topic but, after doing python for ages, recently started writing Rust and semicolon does seems useless. We are doing the indentation and new lines anyway, why not just make them as default language construct as python does. (autodidact developer here, feel free to ELI5 and enlighten me)

There are people who hate python because of the forced indentation. They indent their code in their language of choice, they just don't want something FORCING them to do it. I'm always flabbergasted at this argument.

I suppose I don't quite match the reasoning you're describing, but here's mine. I indent; I just don't want semantic meaning ascribed to whether or not I'm missing an indent. I'll handle the {}s, my editor handles the indent level, and everyone gets along fine.

Re: The melancholy decline of the semicolon

#127

Post by EMM_386 » Sat, Nov 27, 2021, 4:27 PM UTC

comeonseriously wrote: post #100

seoaeu wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t indent my code, my autoformatter does. It is way less effort to get the braces right and then have the indent level inferred automatically

Automated tools get in my way of thinking. I turn off intellisense, auto-formatters, etc... I'll run auto tools during check-in, but not during coding sessions.

> I turn off intellisense

Unless you are doing this for performance reasons, this one I'll never understand.

I'd much rather type "x.someP" and hit tab then type in "x.somePropertyThatHasARidiculousNameIAlwaysForget" after having to consult the documentation yet again to get the name.

Re: The melancholy decline of the semicolon

#128

Post by mac-chaffee » Sat, Nov 27, 2021, 4:36 PM UTC

I use them a lot to control the tone of what I write. Since periods can indicate a serious or angry tone[1], I often need some other way to indicate a separation between two complete sentences. For example: "It looks like you forgot to do X; that's needed to do Y." Using a period could be perceived as anger, but using a comma would make that sentence a comma splice.

[1] https://youtu.be/fS4X1JfX6_Q?t=3m3s

Re: The melancholy decline of the semicolon

#129

Post by ReleaseCandidat » Sat, Nov 27, 2021, 4:43 PM UTC

seoaeu wrote: post #95

comeonseriously wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are people who hate python because of the forced indentation. They indent their code in their language of choice, they just don't want something FORCING them to do it. I'm always flabbergasted at this argument.

I don’t indent my code, my autoformatter does. It is way less effort to get the braces right and then have the indent level inferred automatically

All usable editors also infer the indent levels of brace-less languages. Sometimes you have to change that using a or -, but sometimes I have to write braces in languages with braces too.

Re: The melancholy decline of the semicolon

#130

Post by Renevith » Sat, Nov 27, 2021, 4:45 PM UTC

seoaeu wrote: post #115

bradrn wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the sad thing is, they don’t even know what the passive voice is! See G. K. Pullum, Fear and Loathing of the English Passive [ http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/~gpullum/passive_loathing.html ]. Their unintentional hypocrisy is quite something, e.g.: > … it makes little difference if you decide to look at prose written by the advisers on usage themselves. Consider the beginning of E. B. White's introduction to his revision…

A lot of that article feels like too much of a gotcha. There is a difference between "Alice died of a gunshot wound" and "Bob fatally shot Alice". The fact that neither one is passive voice according to the author's definition doesn't mean that people are wrong for being upset if Bob is left out of the headline. It really seems like missing the point to counter complaints that Bob isn't suitably blamed in a headline…

But it also seems like missing the point for people to criticize that headline for a grammatical error (falsely!) when they really just want Bob to be named... which is exactly the point of that article, right?