Back in the day a large proportion of languages used = for equality and something else for assignment. That something else might have been e.g. * := (Algol-sty

Back in the day a large proportion of languages used = for equality and something else for assignment. That something else might have been e.g. * := (Algol-style :=, not Go-style). * A non-ASCII arrow character (surprisingly not always a <- 1, but sometimes 1 -> a) * A keyword (SET a TO 1) So yes, there was certainly a lot of discussion about it, but in the end this is also just a minor design detail. It's just an accident of history that we ended up with =- as-assignment being the norm.