There's something horribly wrong with everything about this. Why is such a smart person as Crockford wasting his time arguing about semicolons in 2012? Why is this at the top of the most popular hacker website? Why are people writing detailed opinions about semicolons in this thread (with surely more to come?)

One would hope that at least over time the bike sheds being argued about would start to at least evolve into arguments about bike garages and eventually bike factories. But I guess the bike shed is forever a bike shed, as long as we're making bikes.

Whatever the next disruption is in software engineering, please dear God let it be immune-by-design to this type of distraction.

Heh, I was waiting for this post. Coming in the next 24 hours:

- "Why I use minimal semi-colons in Javascript"

- "ASI is broken but I like it"

Honestly I'm shocked at the defense of this practice (of ASI "abusage"). It speaks loudly to Jacob's (fat@githib) ranking of ego-stroking and showboating over creating readable code, particularly for a library "Designed for everyone, everywhere" [1].

I'm confounded that such an attitude can survive in a large engineering organization like Twitter. Google's style guide [2] specifically prohibits this ("Always use semicolons.") and yes, this is the same standard we use internally for writing Javascript.

Just because you can doesn't mean you should. FFS, just get over yourselves and your hipster bullshit and use semi-colons.

[1]: http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/

[2]: http://google-styleguide.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/javascript...

The key point:

  "ASI [“Automatic Semicolon Insertion”] is an error correction
  procedure. If you start to code as if it were a universal
  significant-newline rule, you will get into trouble."—Brendan Eich

Jacob ("fat") comes off looking far worse than Crockford, to my eyes (and that Kit character seems to be 7 years old). It's the arrogance and stupidity of youth facing the crotchety crankiness of experience. Crockford has earned the right to have a strong opinion here IMO.

But it's not just bike-shedding. It's more pernicious than that. It's actually something that looks like bike-shedding to uninformed observers, but something that strongly affects cross-version compatibility. Javascript does automatic semicolon insertion by taking advantage of potentially ambiguous constructs that happen to be resolved in one way right now. But they may be actually ambiguous in the future - in the case where a unary prefix operator becomes a binary operator. Language extension usually works this way: a previously unambiguously wrong statement is made valid; but JS semicolon insertion often turns "wrong" statements into "correct" statements, so it leaves less "entropy" to be taken advantage of when increasing the power of the syntax. I think there's a strong case for JS to not insert semicolons here, and I agree with Crockford's position on not handling it in JSMin. It's the right thing to do.

Couldn't upvote this more.

I am fed up with posts telling me email is broken and a new disruptive tech will be the cure. Email is an open protocol, decentralized, providing optional security.

Shortcomings—or rather call them additional requirements—can be solved with tools keeping email focussed on async text-based communication. Want to send large files? Dropbox. Want more automation? Improve the client side and/or write scripts. Want less spam? Don't distribute your address or sign-up everywhere.

If you don't like your inbox being a todo-list you should change something—maybe your job, profession or your work environment but it's definitely not email. I have got rarely todos in my inbox.

For me, email is—if you mind a set of rules—an efficient way of communication which is documented. You can easily and asynchronously discuss and agree on topics in a transparent manner with one or more participants, again: with an open and decentralized technology, no middleman anywhere. Sometimes obviously it's better to meet folks face to face.

Now tell me, which tool can do this? What do you want to improve?

This whole email is broken thing is just done for the sake of getting attention, making a lame conference presentation "disruptive" or getting some crappy todo app funded.

"Here is your new apartment. You must use a key to enter it. If you forget your key, you can buzz the superintendent during business hours, and if the super is home, (s)he will open the door for you.”

If you try to take your key with you at all times, the super will save your bacon once in a blue moon when you forget your key. On the other hand, if you think of the door as only needing a key when you wish to have it opened on nights and week-ends, you are on your way to trouble.