It's a voluntary design choice since the beginning of Python to avoid the very common mistake of doing: while continue = "yes": instead of: while con

It's a voluntary design choice since the beginning of Python to avoid the very common mistake of doing: while continue = "yes": instead of: while continue == "yes": Those mistakes introduce bugs that are hard to spot because they don't cause an immediate error, linters can hardly help with them and even a senior can make them while being tired.