[krapp]

>When I encounter a 12-line ragged cascade of curly brackets, square brackets and parentheses, sprinkled with semicolons, I wonder how that can be considered OK.

It's considered OK because the extra syntax carries semantic weight, and the semicolons disambiguate intent for the interpreter (because while semicolons are optional in javascript, leaving them out can lead to errors.)

And as someone just beginning to play around with (Arc) Lisp, I still can appreciate both paradigms. Neither is objectively wrong.

[3b9cd7355317f55]

> It's considered OK because the extra syntax carries semantic weight, and the semicolons disambiguate intent for the interpreter (because while semicolons are optional in javascript, leaving them out can lead to errors.)

Which is a very roundabout way of saying that JavaScript has a very complicated grammar. Is it necessary? No, it isn't. People use and love languages with much simpler grammars, such as FORTH (reverse Polish notation), APL (monadic and dyadic algebraic notation), and Lisp (fully parenthesized Polish notation).

[krapp]

>Which is a very roundabout way of saying that JavaScript has a very complicated grammar.

If you think Javascript's grammar is "very complicated" then C++ will probably give you a heart attack.

You're overstating what amounts to an aesthetic argument, which is fine, but not really compelling.