It’s really just a matter of personal preference.
Generally, sclang has uniform function call syntax, so f(g) is the same as g.f. This means that you can either write wait(5) or 5.wait. This works with every method (including class methods!) so you can commit syntax crimes like read(Buffer, s, "sounds/a11wlk01.wav") *)
When you combine this with the trailing block argument syntax, you get quite a few possible combinations:
if (b) { ... } { ... }if(b, { ... }, { ... })b.if({ ... }, { ... })b.if { ... } { ... }if (b, { ... }) { ... } // ugh!b.if({ ... }) { ... } // ewww!
As for your question why people seem to prefer function call syntax (with trailing blocks) for certain methods like if, fork or loop: I guess it’s just clearer to have the method at the beginning. If you put .fork at the end of a long block, readers have to scroll all the way down before they know what’s going on. For if-statements in particular the function call style just looks more familiar to other languages with C-style syntax (C, C++, JavaScript, Java, C#, etc.)
*) Yes, that’s really the same as Buffer.read(s, "sounds/a11wlk01.wav")!