> "If you want the branch to consist of an atomic instruction, you write that instruction by itself"
No, I don't, I generally use curly braces for those too. So for me, the solution would be throwing an compile error when those are missing. Is that really all it takes to make a language "modern"?
I also don't understand the jab at semicolons, which I like, nor do I see how getting rid of brackets around the condition is really a net saving when you have to write "then" or "loop" instead. Apart from being twice as many characters to type, words distract me (much) more than symbols, and now that I think of it, I wonder how programming would be like with symbols for reserved keywords like "if" and "function", so the only text you see anywhere in your code would be quoted strings or variable/function/class names...
Anyway, I think when talking about distractions, one should be careful with claiming to speak for everybody (at least unless you did a whole lot of studying test subjects or something).
Having worked on both line oriented and free-form languages over the last 30 years, there's less opportunity for foolishness when 1 line = 1 statement. (so long as you can continue a long line with an obvious convention such as a trailing backslash, ampersand or perhaps a comma)
Line oriented syntax need not be limiting: Ruby, for example, does a good job of treating statements such as "if", "while", "case" as expressions that can return values.
Also, there's only one correct way to indent with "END" type keywords: the body is indented to the right of the start/end lines, and the start (FOR/IF/...) and end (END/DONE/...) lines are aligned.
Now if we could just get an "AGAIN (parameters...)" keyword for tail call elimination, coupled with almost mandatory immutability, in more languages... :-)
Even though I already only put one statement in each line, and indent as if indentation mattered, I still like semicolons and curly braces... just to have the option to make the occasional very long freak line more readable without having to change characters because of whitespace changes.
No, I don't, I generally use curly braces for those too. So for me, the solution would be throwing an compile error when those are missing. Is that really all it takes to make a language "modern"?
I also don't understand the jab at semicolons, which I like, nor do I see how getting rid of brackets around the condition is really a net saving when you have to write "then" or "loop" instead. Apart from being twice as many characters to type, words distract me (much) more than symbols, and now that I think of it, I wonder how programming would be like with symbols for reserved keywords like "if" and "function", so the only text you see anywhere in your code would be quoted strings or variable/function/class names...
Anyway, I think when talking about distractions, one should be careful with claiming to speak for everybody (at least unless you did a whole lot of studying test subjects or something).