Should programming languages be strict or loose?

Posted by Ralph on Programmers See other posts from Programmers or by Ralph
Published on 2011-02-19T07:54:06Z Indexed on 2011/02/19 15:32 UTC
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programming-languages

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syntax

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ambiguity

In Python and JavaScript, semi-colons are optional.

In PHP, quotes around array-keys are optional ($_GET[key] vs $_GET['key']), although if you omit them it will first look for a constant by that name. It also allows 2 different styles for blocks (colon, or brace delimited).

I'm creating a programming language now, and I'm trying to decide how strict I should make it. There are a lot of cases where extra characters aren't really necessary and can be unambiguously interpreted due to priorities, but I'm wondering if I should still enforce them or not to encourage good programming habits.

What do you think?

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