Curly braces

Why would anyone seriously want to use curly braces to denote scope? Surely significant indentation, or implicit scope based on the surrounding keywords, is far superior.

Also consider this: every time you wish to enter { or }, you must hold down the shift key. That is one extra wasted keypress per scopening and sclosing.

And it just looks messy, like a spastic has been scribbling nonsense all over your screen.

if (!connected(node1, node2));
        alternative_algorithm = 1;