Why blame BASIC (1960) & C (1969) - why not blame their ancestors, BCPL and Fortran,
Before Algol 60 came along there were more than enough semi-colons for everyone, but since it came along you can't buy a semi colon for love or money. I've even heard that the reason editors take them all out is that they sell them to programmers. All resources are finite, including punctuation - in Spain they're not only running out of €s there's also a desperate shortage of ¿s.
Dang, let's blame that bloody woman Lovelace, she started it all
BR