On Aug 16, 4:22 am, Steven D'Aprano <st...@remove-this-
cybersource.com.au> wrote:
> I don't like normal assignment. After nearly four decades of mathematics
> and programming, I'm used to it, but I don't think it is especially good.
> It confuses beginners to programming: they get one set of behaviour
> drilled into them in maths class, and then in programming class we use
> the same notation for something which is almost, but not quite, the same.
> Consider the difference between:
>
> y = 3 + x
> x = z
>
> as a pair of mathematics expressions versus as a pair of assignments.
> What conclusion can you draw about y and z?
Yeah, the syntax most commonly used for assignment today sucks. In the
past, it was common to see languages with syntaxes like
y <- y + 1
or
y := y + 1
or
let y = y + 1
But these languages have mostly fallen out of favor. The popular
statistical programming language R still uses the
y <- y + 1
syntax, though.
Personally, my favorite is Lisp, which looks like
(set! y (+ y 1))
or
(let ((x 3)
(y 4))
(foo x y))
I like to be able to read everything from left to right, and Lisp does
that more than any other programming language.
I would definitely not like a language that obscures assignment by
moving it over to the right side of lines.
|>ouglas
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