Meanwhile, most large software projects are still written in C and continue to be delivered late, under-functioned or unstable. As long as a smaller and simpler language does not sacrifice power, it is time for programmers and their management to wake up to the possibility of shipping stable, complete software on schedule. This starts with the decision of an appropriate programming language. In the average program, a minority of the statements are split across many lines. Requiring a semicolon at the end of every statement means requiring a semicolon at the end of almost every line.
Semicolons are a fact of life.
Given that the end of a line is most often the end of a statement, the trivial programming language design decision is to use a special character in the rarer case of needing more than one line for a statement. Requiring a semicolon at the end of a statement is tedious and error prone. Languages requiring a semicolon ought to be required to present a nice error message when the semicolon is forgotten. In F, the end of line is the end of statement. Any lesser goal would result in an interesting but not a challenging exercise.