If I were to make an improvement in any programming language, I would get rid of the semicolon at the end of every statement in MySQL.  There’s no reason to have to end every statement in a semicolon, since as soon as you hit “Enter” the language should know that that is your query.  The only use for having a semicolon is so that you can hit “Enter” and write your query on multiple lines.  If people really need to have that feature, that can be replaced with a “Shift + Enter” or something similarly easy.  It’s a huge pain to have to include a semicolon at the end of every statement when chances are you’re not going to want to hit “Enter” to format your query too often.

 

            The nice thing about this change is that it’s very easy to do, because I find it difficult to remember to put a semicolon at the end of every statement.  It is also very useful and totally backwards compatible.  All programs will benefit from it.

 

Since MySQL is different from any other language, you can’t directly compare 
            this change to another language—however Python comes close, having 
            gotten rid of semicolons and gone with formatting to indicate groups 
            of code instead. This change isn’t going to really change any of the 
            programs themselves, but it will improve performance and decrease 
            head-banging. 
            <p>Example code—before the change: </p>
            <p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; select name from nations where code=US; </p>
            <p>Example code—after the change: </p>
            <p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; select name from nations where code=US </p>
            <p>It’s not groundbreaking, but it is an easy change that should be 
            done (and maybe has been done in some version, but Randy never said 
            so and so I’m blaming him if that’s the case).</p>