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Hmm. My point of view is that assignment is a more common operation than comparison for equality, so it should therefore require fewer characters to express.
FWIW, I've always thought that allowing assignment in the 'C' if statement was a serious design flaw in the language.
Software Zen: delete this;
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Gary R. Wheeler wrote: a serious design flaw in the language.
Nah, nah, it's a strength... 
How about the comma operator? Ever use it?
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PIEBALDconsult wrote: How about the comma operator? Ever use it?
Hmm. While I've obviously used it, I've never found a problem that was best solved with a user-defined comma operator. That strikes me as 'clever', and the poor schmuck who has to maintain my stuff over the coming years (namely me) ![Elephant | [mastadon]](https://www.codeproject.com/script/Forums/Images/elephant.gif) ing hates that sort of thing.
Software Zen: delete this;
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::= is the only solution 
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I get the joke but why not ≔
Seriously now, I think it's a shame the only thing that hasn't changed in 40+ years of programming is the keyboard. We are stuck to the same limited set of characters that our ancestors put on a typewriter.
Oops! seems I'm ranting again 
Mircea
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I would vote for := , I used Pascal a bit back in the day.
Mircea Neacsu wrote: limited set of characters that our ancestors put on a typewriter
Yet several languages allow Unicode now. Oh, and don't forget C's trigraphs. 
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Don't expect the compiler to interpret the Unicode symbols identically with the digraphs and trigraphs, though. Not even the monographs, such as × for multiplication.
I never tested out the limits for legality of unicode characters in e.g. C#. Even 7-bit ISO 646 ("ASCII", for those across the pond) has characters not legal in identifiers. Which characters in the full Unicode set are allowed in identifiers? Checking it out by trial and error takes more time than I am willing to spend!
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Btw. I don't get it....
But "::=" means at least in EBNF something like 'definition'
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Quote: Btw. I don't get it....
Piebald, jokingly, came up with the idea of ∴ (the math sign for "therefore" used in logical proofs) instead of the assignment operator. I proposed (half jokingly) to use ≔ (U+2254), the colon equal sign used by Algol, Pascal and a few other languages.
Mircea
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I like things to come in logical order, so my favorite is =:
A + B =: C, or "Add A and B. Then store it in C" is far better than
C := A + B: "Assign to C ... just wait a second, I have to calculate it first ... Add A and B. I hope you remember what we were going to do with it, as we said a while ago before we started calculating the expression ..."
I programmed for a few years in a proprietary language using =:, and came to love it. It also had a half-swap operator: As in many languages, you could carry the result value assigned to C on, so the same value can be assigned to D and E: A+B =: C =: D =: E. Using :=: the old value of C was carried on. So you could e.g. link in a new element at the head of the list by NewElt =: Head :=: NewElt.Next. This comes far more natural when you read the code left to right, rather than skipping back and forth, as you have to when starting the statement with what you will be doing last.
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Interesting! I've never seen those operators in a general use language but I can see their use. The closest thing I've seen to your =: operator was the verbose:
ADD a TO B GIVING c As a side note, only the ≕ (U+2255) is currently included in the Unicode standard.
Mircea
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Mircea Neacsu wrote: We are stuck to the same limited set of characters that our ancestors put on a typewriter.
Try APL.
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APL is the exception that proves the rule. The one language that wanted to break the mold and do things differently has a following of... sorry can't see anybody around here 
Together with LISP and FORTH, APL proves that revolutionary concepts gain very little traction among lemmings (sorry, I mean no disrespect for the rodents).
Mircea
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Mircea Neacsu wrote: sorry can't see anybody around here
You can count me as one. I don't have any task where I can use it for some "serious" purpose, but it was fun to play around with. At the moment, I don't have an APL interpreter available (except for one running under DOS, but that's not the thing for me). Buying a commercial one is too expensive for a play toy. And APLs of today have experienced the same feature creep as most other languages, making it a far more messy language than the pure APL I learned in my youth.
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Dan Neely wrote: But why, "a monad is a monoid in the category of endofunctors, what's the problem?"
Software Zen: delete this;
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From the first link:
Quote: 1964 - John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz create BASIC, an unstructured programming language for non-computer scientists.
1965 - Kemeny and Kurtz go to 1964.
Lots of other hilarious stuff! 
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
"Hope is contagious"
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Yup, it's a classic. Really kinda wish he'd update it for the last decades fun.
Did you ever see history portrayed as an old man with a wise brow and pulseless heart, weighing all things in the balance of reason?
Is not rather the genius of history like an eternal, imploring maiden, full of fire, with a burning heart and flaming soul, humanly warm and humanly beautiful?
--Zachris Topelius
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Gary R. Wheeler wrote: they were going to fix the problem; := for assignment in Pascal and Ada
Every time I see that it reminds me of an emoji.
Jeremy Falcon
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Marc Clifton wrote: my dislike of the previous coder's code
I have been both blessed and cursed through my 23-year career that I almost never have to fix anything I didn't create/break!
The previous coder is me, so I only have myself to blame if it's hard to maintain or worse, misbehaves...but when it's good, well...at least nobody complains!
"Go forth into the source" - Neal Morse
"Hope is contagious"
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I love JavaScript despite its haphazard nature. Always have; always will. It will always have a special place in my heart even if WASM replaces it one day. Outside of F# it's one of the few popular languages teaching functional concepts. Despite that... I 1,000% agree. Thar be some script kiddies that give it a bad name. Forget the functional vs OOP paradigm, we're talking folks who don't know the difference between a closure and a catfish but think they're experts because they've seen a document.write once. It's so popular, that just comes with the territory. Any language with as many people using it would have tons of bad code floating around.
Btw, I much prefer TS over plain JS these days too.
Jeremy Falcon
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The teacher's workspace has both style and space! (9)
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
modified 21-Oct-22 4:53am.
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Classroom
Oops! Wrong number of letters. 
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I think he's probably made a mistake with the number of letters
Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming “Wow! What a Ride!" - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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