From: karlvonl <doodpants@...>
Date: 2009-02-25T03:44:26+09:00
Subject: Re: Nexus Programming Language

On Feb 24, 2:02 am, "M. Edward (Ed) Borasky" <zzn...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 10:04 PM, William James <w_a_x_...@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > Gary Wright wrote:
>
> >> On Feb 23, 2009, at 9:49 PM, Phlip wrote:
>
> >> > Gary Wright wrote:
>
> >> >> I always liked Eiffel's choice of := for assignment and
> >> >> a single = for comparison.
>
> > That dates back to Pascal.
>
> Actually it dates back to Algol. The people who designed it did it for
> a reason, but I can't remember what it was. I think it was to remind
> people that assignment was not equality, and the purists pronounce
>
> a := b
>
> as "a becomes b".

If I ever design my own programming language, I'm going to use := for
assignment and == for equality, and let a single = be a syntax error,
just to avoid the whole confusion.