[Nadya]

>Pity that omitting them in JS potentially leaves you open to some nasty issues.

There is only a single instance I think of that is of legitimate concern - which is #4 listed on this blog [0]. The rest, to me, seem like arbitrarily shitty formatting or scenarios that never arise in an attempt to show why semicolons are needed.

  i
  ++
  j

Who would write that? Why would anyone write that?

That being said - "remove all semicolons except the times you need semicolons" is silly. I also personally dislike the look of prefixed semicolons, so I'll continue to add semicolons. But I disagree the "nasty issues" are a legitimate concern anymore than "adding semicolons where they don't belong" is a legitimate concern. Both can bite you in the ass and both require a small understanding of where semicolons are needed and how Javascript gets parsed.

Ultimately I think having semicolons will increase the amount of people who contribute - as people will be more comfortable with that style - but I think to have or to not have semicolons is a stylistic choice in the end.

[0] http://blog.izs.me/post/2353458699/an-open-letter-to-javascr...