Should programming languages be strict or loose?
- by Ralph
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?