not arguing with your general point, but the difference between pre and post increment is very useful when writing things like stacks and queues with pointers.

not arguing with your general point, but the difference between pre and post increment is very useful when writing things like stacks and queues with pointers. these days maybe people use libraries or templates, but i suspect they were introduced for ease of programming, not ease of translation. [edit: really, it's two sides of the same coin. it's useful, so both c and cisc chips have it, so the two match up...]