[pizza234]

> I have a hard time accepting this, because I have done exactly this, in practice, with languages that I've designed.

I don't know which your languages are.

Some constructs are incompatible with optional semicolons, as semicolons change the expression semantics (I've given an example); comparison with languages that don't support such constructs is an apple-to-oranges comparison.

An apple-to-apple comparison is probably with Ruby, which does have optional semicolons and is also expression oriented at the same time. In the if/else specific case, it solves the problem by introducing inconsistency, in the empty statement, making it semantically ambiguous.