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From: Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: How to make Ada popular. Get rid of ";" at end of statement.
Date: Tue, 23 Jul 2019 16:56:49 -0700
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Date: 2019-07-23T16:56:49-07:00
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"Ingo M." <announce@amkade.com> writes:
> There are languages like OCaml which use even _double_
> semicolons. This looks also annoying at the beginning. However, when
> you understand the design of OCaml then those double semicolons really
> make sense, and they don't look so annoying anymore. Many people are
> also disgusted by Lisp (all these strange parentheses). However, when
> you have realized the beauty of Lisp then those seemingly annoying
> parentheses get out of your focus quickly. They become just
> natural.

Even better than that, if you want to start a Lisp comment at the
beginning of a line, it's customary to prefix it with a *triple*
semicolon.  That's better than Ada's single semicolon or even Ocaml's
double one.

There are rumors that the NSA is working on a secret programming
language for use against terrorists.  The details are classified but
some well known PLT geeks have whispered that it uses quadruple
semicolons.  Putin complained over the Moscow-Washington hot line that
any more than 3 semicolons is banned by a 1957 treaty, resulting in
Trump supposedly offered to relax the curly brace rule in exchange for a
concession about the semicolons.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists last month published a scathing
editorial denouncing this new escalation, but so far, the setting of the
Doomsday Clock has not changed.