Semi-Colons in Tweet War

Never done this before, but Alfred2 made a post on Twitter that mentioned the way that Visual Basic programmers can eschew semi-colons that other languages seem to need to find the end of statements.

I responded that I quite like semi-colons, as they help me lay my programs out how I want. We then exchanged a couple more tweets about compiler design and there the matter rested. I think this was my first “Tweet War”

I quite like discussions like this. Of course there is no right answer in these situations (it is a bit like the the brace wars of way back where programmers debated the best way to lay out source code) but during the discourse you can pick up useful snippets of information and any experience in pitching arguments and defending your position is a good idea – as long as you approach it in the right frame of mind.

Years ago we had a debating society at the university and I ended up proposing the motion “Software Engineering is not Engineering”. I would have won the debate too, if I had taken the trouble to make sure that all my posse turned up – something my opponent had done first…