Although some scaffolding may be acceptable for a large application, Hello World should be a one-liner:
print_line("Hello, world!")
A line of code gets written once, but may need to be read and maintained many times by many people. Therefore, it is desirable to make the language as easy to read and maintain as possible, even if this makes it take a little more effort to write.
It's important to be able to work with other Parrot-based languages. If this means using some standard Parrot idioms rather than a purer Amber-only solution, it's worth it.
If you have three apples, you count them 1, 2, 3.
It's the same with elements of an array, or characters in a string. In Amber, we count them 1, 2, 3, ...
There's no need to put a semicolon between (or after) each instruction, although you can use semicolons to separate multiple instructions on one line:
a := 10 ; b := 20 ; c := a + b do_something_with(a) do_something_with(b, c)
